'They were experiencing more rain during those few days than they had had during the whole of the previous year altogether. It poured.'

Helen Angove gets her umbrella out.

My guidebook extols the delights of San Diego, just down the coast from us, bordering Mexico. While the rest of the USA may be huddling under whatever protection it can muster from torrential rain or blizzards, the book tells me, San Diego will be bathed in golden sunshine.

Sadly, when visited San Diego in January, this was most certainly not the case. They were experiencing more rain during those few days than they had had during the whole of the previous year altogether. It poured.

The San Diego river was swollen to something like ten times its normal width - coming back over the footbridge to the hotel, one afternoon, I had to take my shoes and socks off and paddle, aided by a modern-day St Christopher who helped me carry my daughter’s pushchair.   The nearby golf course had suddenly sprung a lot of new ornamental lakes, and you could have white-water rafted down one of the local roads.

Drains

When it rains along the South California coast, it really does rain. You suddenly realise why the drains leading under the sidewalks are large enough for dogs to fall down them, and why every valley has an enormous cement-lined storm drain running along the bottom of it.

And the most major source of pollution from Los Angeles is not vehicle emissions or sewage or anything you might expect. Rather it is the run-off created by storms, vomiting gallons of water carrying spilled oil, fertilisers, rubbish and goodness knows what else, straight into the Pacific Ocean.

And when this weather happens, as with snow in Britain, no-one is prepared for it. Traffic slows to the speed of a dial-up internet connection as everyone tries to remember how to turn on their windscreen wipers without getting off their mobile phones (“Oh my God! Honey, you should see this. There‘s, like, water! And it’s falling from the sky!“).

Our yard converts itself into a swimming pool. News bulletins talk about the weather with the breathless excitement they usually reserve for high-speed car chases, and cut to waterlogged reporters standing on rainy street corners (“Yes, well, as you can see, Hank, everybody here is sheltering under an umbrella…” ).

More seriously, of course, there are also mud slides that cause loss to both life and property, and flood damage can be considerable. There are good reasons why the fire stations hand out sandbags during stormy weather.

Variety

In Britain we are infamous for talking about the weather more than anywhere else in the world. But then in Britain, we do get a lot of variety.

Here, the weather is more uniform (oh, the monotony of those endlessly azure-blue skies), but when there is weather it is definitely a topic for conversation - if you can get out of the house to see anyone to talk to about it. Bad weather in LA means either torrential rain, or blistering heat - either makes you want to cower inside, close the windows and lock the doors.  

Now, however, the weather is back to sun-bathed normal - for us, at least. I am still finding it hard to adjust to living somewhere where I can be walking around in sandals and T-shirt, when somebody in the same country as me is suffering a blizzard.

In fact, somebody in the same State as me might be experiencing a blizzard. Just a few tens of miles from us horizontally (plus a few thousand feet vertically), up in the San Gabriel mountains, roads have been closed and homes snowed in during the last month.

If I knew more about meteorology, I would be able to explain why the weather over this huge land-mass, bordered as it is by vast oceans, displays such geographical inconsistency and ferocity. I might even make a few astute comments about the effects of global warming. As it is though, I will just admit to finding myself missing a good old commonplace British drizzle.

And finally - don’t let my comments about the weather in San Diego put you off going there. It’s a fun and interesting city, and the weather is normally lovely - even in January.

Anglican priest from the UK, who moved to California in July 2003.

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