Bill Kay finds rain - in Pasadena and in Hampstead

Rain. With one exception, I’ve never seen anything like the rain that hit the Los Angeles area last night. It started slowly then came down in huge, torrential floods. I was at a meeting in – yes, it seems appropriate in a punny sort of way – Lake Avenue, north Pasadena, near enough to the mountain to be at a fairly steep incline. I drove up there OK, windscreen wipers at midspeed, hard to make out road markings but they were visible enough to get along, especially as traffic was light. Then I found a parking space on the street, pointing down the hill. So far, so good. It was then I noticed the wheels of the car in front, I could hardly see them. The torrent of water was hitting the wheels with sufficient force and volume to create a mini-tsunami, high enough to hide them.
By the time I came out to the car again, two hours later, the torrent was three or four feet wide. I had to get across to reach my car door, and I thought I might be able to jump it, failed, and my foot was soaked up to the ankle and beyond.
It was only after we got home that the rain started in earnest, but by then I could watch it from the safety of French windows as it bounced off the patio floor and furniture. It has stopped now, the following morning, but more is predicted. And even then the local water wallahs still say it’s just a drop in the ocean compared with what’s needed to compensate for the recent drought years. That sounds horribly familiar to anyone who lived through similar conditions in Britain.
Talking of which, the only rain I experienced that was worse than last night’s was in north London in 1975. The International Journal of Meterology website records:

“In the early evening of 14 August 1975 for a period of 2 to 3 hours, a small area of north London was subjected to the most intense rainstorm ever known in the city. On Hampstead Heath a total of 170.8mm was recorded, most of it in two and a half hours, and within the vicinity a flood disaster of unprecedented magnitude. Cars floated along streets which resembled canals; torrents of water bore down walls, poured into basements, filled subways, burst sewers and brought the underground railway to a standstill; and so many houses were damaged and dozens of families were evacuated and had to be rehoused the next day.”

I was going to visit a friend in the Royal Free Hospital, Hampstead, and unusually caught a bus from Farringdon Street, near Ludgate Circus, where I was working on the Evening Standard. It started off normally, then the rain began – and got heavier. And heavier. And heavier.
By the time the bus reached Kentish Town, you couldn’t see the street: it was awash. The bus had to stop awhile, but eventually the driver carried on and I got to the hospital.
The plan was to go out for a meal – the friend, Sue Thomas, was in hospital because her baby was due, but she could still get out. That, though, had to be abandoned because of the weather and I somehow got a minicab home.
California has some way to go to match that evening.