Bonnie Hawthorne Photography

The storm that all the news channels have been breathlessly predicting arrived last night. I had an appointment on the other side of the county so I had to venture out in it. All morning, I’d heard sirens from every direction so was ready for the worst on the freeways. Luckily because it’s Martin Luther King Day (BTW, I hate “MLK”—he wasn’t a fast food franchise) traffic was not bad. I hydroplaned a little on the 2, but the time I got to the 10, I barely needed my wipers.

Coming back up the hill was another story.

Let’s just say that on days like this, I’m glad I have all-wheel drive. There’s an inch of streaming water running down all of the roads, with deep puddles in the intersections. And because of last summer’s Station fire, there’s an awful lot of mud.

People in my area now know that these white barricades are called “K-rails.”

The smell of ashy mud is pretty overwhelming. Much like a doused campfire x1000

Hard to tell from this photo, but this is mostly mud. This was taken on the site dedicated to the people who died in the 1934 New Year’s Day flood, which followed the November 1933 Pickens fire. That flood and mud flow was the reason they put in these dandy washes and a bunch of catch basins that look like big sink drains. Fingers crossed that the catch basins don’t clog and that at least some of this storm heads down the hill.

Here’s a super cool photo after the 1934 disaster:

http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-then25-2009jan25-pg,0,827747.photogallery

and a lil history

http://articles.latimes.com/2009/jan/25/local/me-then25