All About the River.. LA River Flooding

You have to have lived in L.A. at one time to really appreciate what is going today. There is water in the Los Angeles River and it's flowing fast while rescue crews search frantically for a missing person who possibly may have drowned. A body was just found in a drainage canal in Garden Grove by a passer by . . .

Understand normally there is no water in the LA River to speak of... a small trickle of water flows in the middle of what looks more like a natural area with trees and pavement on either side where people ride their horses.

One person was just rescued who was clinging to a tree. Unfortunately another person was with him and that person has not yet been found. They are hoping the other person was able to find a tree to hold onto. Why you ask are there trees IN the Los Angeles River? Because parts of it are concrete with a little ribbon of blue in the middle and other areas have earthen river bottoms where bushes and trees spring up as ... normally there is not really water in the Los Angeles River.

Today it's a raging river sweeping anything in it down stream due to the Winter Storm.

A long time I go I lived in Long Beach California, a wonderful time in my life. I was a young mother in a new world trying to adapt to geology and earthquakes as I was on the wrong coast for hurricanes. I sent my father a map of where we lived and the places we went so he could get a feel for my new life.

He called me up and said he saw we lived near the river. I told him... "NOOOO there's no river here, we are near the Pacific Ocean" and he insisted I lived near the river. In fact he said it was walking distance. This was a real mystery to me as I had never seen any river anywhere the whole time I had lived in Southern California. My husband explained to me we did live near the river, but there's no water in it. For a Miami girl this was a real "HUH????" 

(Do you see a river here other than the type that says Los Angeles River???)

The next time we drove over the "river" my husband, a Valley Boy,  pointed down to what looked like a natural area where you often saw people out riding their bikes or horses on the concrete pathway... there was a river it seems down there..... somewhere.......  Darn if my father was right. That little dark blue line in the middle of the green park like area was.............. the Los Angeles River.

Not today...........

Today the news feed on Twitter is nonstop all about the river and the flooding.

I was going to write today about mud slides in Camarillo or houses sliding into the Pacific with waves that looked like a storm surge.. but no the truth is today the story is all about the river.d

Some history on the river...

http://web.archive.org/web/20070611021922/http://www.urbanedpartnership.org/target/units/river/tour/hist.html

Some information on things to do in and around the river on normal days...


http://www.kcet.org/arts/artbound/counties/los-angeles/play-the-la-river-project-51.html

Today it's all about the swift water rescues and flooding and hoping that they find the woman who was see bobbing in the water and then disappeared.

Weather always happening somewhere when you least expect it.

Besos Bobbi

Ps...Today most of the weather is on the West Coast. In a week or so there may be a chance for winter weather in the South... maybe. Stay tuned.