The National Weather Service warned Southern California residents to prepare for “life-threatening” flooding, which could overwhelm flood-control systems and other infrastructure. The storm is also expected to bring punishing winds that could topple trees and power lines. LA Times

“It’s been 84 years since [a hurricane] came ashore, so it’s a once-in-a-lifetime event. This is really an all-hands-on-deck effort.” LA County Supervisor Janice Hahn.

Way back when Michele had COVID – or was testing positive and feeling very punk – I left the Great Central Valley expecting to pick up Highway 178 from the north, but the highway was still washed out from the same Spring storms that had formed Lake Tulari. After detouring south, I got on Highway 178 under an increasingly cloudy sky.

I planned to stay in Lone Pine for a couple of nights and spend the days driving up into the Sierras on the roads that lead to trailheads so I could noodle around photographing. I got up in the morning to a beautiful day with an almost clear sky, and Mt. Whitney glowed in the early light.

When I looked at the LA Times website, they were getting hysterical over Tropical Storm Hillary. As I drove up to Onion Valley at 9,600 feet, I was starting to get a little nervous and I kept thinking, This is not like me to get anxious over a rain storm. But that fear – caution, whatever – is like me. I don’t like it, I want to deny it, but as I’ve gotten older, I’ve become more cautious. More risk-averse. Risks I routinely took as a young man – or even as a middle-aged man – now seem like real risks. Real risks I no longer want to take. Now, I kept thinking about the roads into the Sierras that had been washed out and how I didn’t want to be on them in the expected heavy rainstorm.

Hillary was reputed to be the biggest storm in a hundred years, and I didn’t want to be in it. Still, the eye of the storm hadn’t reached Baja California, and I was about twelve hundred miles north of that, so I figured I had a couple of days of clear sky. Then, coming back down from Onion Valley, where it was Spring and the flowers were in bloom, the sky was getting cloudier by the hour, and I was getting more fearful.

By the time I got to the Mono Lake overlook, the sky was looking threatening. The threatening sky convinced me to bail out on the 395 corridor and drive to Michele’s family cabin for the night.

By the time I got to Bridgeport, the sky was getting dark.

I started thinking about the speed at which a clear day became dark and gloomy and how this was the biggest storm to hit California in 84 years. Another way to say that is We had a storm like that before. But we are still pumping hydrocarbons into the atmosphere and approaching the day when storms won’t be like Hillary, they will be bigger and they will be like nothing we have had before.

Much of what is happening today has happened before, but we are heading for a time when heat domes will be hotter and last longer than ever before, and hurricanes and typhoons will be more voracious. The rains will be heavier than ever, and the floods bigger. We’ll try to adjust, humans are good at adjusting, but before we can completely adjust, it will get worse. Setting new records, hotest for forever or most rain in one day in history type records.

Driving towards Tahoe, I started thinking that Hillary is not a once-in-a-lifetime event, Hillary is the future. When I got to the family cabin in Olympic Valley, I unloaded the car, and went to dinner at Plump Jack where I had a glass of light red wine and an outstanding cioppino with the scallops and prawns cooked perfectly. It was a great way to end the day and, when I had a sip of wine, closed my eyes, and relaxed, I could almost hear Nero playing his violin.