We like to make fun of the local TV weathermen for the panic-stricken way they react to every cloud in the sky, but the truth is that most Calis (myself included) are pretty much clueless when it comes to weather. One of the reasons we live in SoCal is so we don’t have weather, and most of what we know is from experiences living elsewhere or hours spent watching the Discovery Channel. For the vast majority of the time, the forecast for LA is unchanged – sun, light breezes and mild temperatures.

Once in a while, though, the weather gods throw us a curveball. Most of the storms that roll off the Pacific pass to the north of us (are you listening, Portland?) – all we get are a few annoying clouds. But when the El Nino phenomenom fires up in the equatorial Pacific, things can get a little interesting – like they’re gonna get this week.

The following is the summary from a much longer forecast from Samuel Johnson of the USGS up in Santa Cruz. To say it catches ones interest is quite an understatement:

In short, the next 2-3 weeks (at least) are likely to be more active across California than any other 2-3 week period in recent memory.  The potential exists for a dangerous flood scenario to arise at some point during this interval, especially with the possibility of a heavy rain-on-snow event during late week 2.  In some parts of Southern California, a whole season’s worth of rain could fall over the course of 5-10 days.  This is likely to be a rather memorable event. Stay tuned…

To hear it described, we’re supposed to see a series of really fast, really nasty storms that will dump a couple of inches each on us here at the beach, and even more in the mountains surrounding LA.  That could be problematic for the folks in the foothill burn areas both in LA and Orange counties, where sandbags and K-rails aren’t going to do much against a wall of mud.

I’ve seen a couple of other forecasts that use the word “biblical” to describe what’s gonna happen this week. Naturally, I have to spend most of it in a class at a Boeing facility in Huntington Beach, which means I get to experience rush hour freeway traffic right in the middle of this slop. Should be … fun.

I’ll have the Home Office Rain Gauge deployed before the first drops fall – we’ll see together just how deep it gets.

Stay tuned …