🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <3nr1pu$q25@news.aero.org>,
Robert S. Helfman <helfman@aero.org> wrote:

>I believe the change of direction occurred in the floods of 1862. Every
>river in Southern California went on the rampage during a 31-day
>period of almost continuous rain (I think it was in January or February of

Whoa! and I thought this past winter was bad...

>that year). The L.A. River, San Gabriel River, and Santa Ana River all
>flooded, turning much of the area into a series of large shallow lakes.

That would have been pretty interesting to see...

>The L.A. River used to come pretty much straight out of downtown, then
>turned west around what is now Vernon Avenue, ran along the base of the
>Baldwin Hills and met Ballona Creek near the current intersection of
>Rodeo Road and La Cienega (alias: "the swamp") Blvd. The 1862 flood
>broke one of the river's meander-loops near Vernon Ave and took off
>toward San Pedro, never to return.

So was there a minor N-S creek or ditch south of Vernon before 1862?
Or did the water just find a convenient route? The river runs in more or less
a straight line from that area.

Thanks for the historical perspective. Speaking of Ballona, does it,
or did it have a real source? Today it just seems to pop out of
nowhere in the Fairfax/Venice area. Did this also exist pre-1862?

>It supplied a population of about 300,000 people around 1906. But,
>with the climate of L.A. being CSA (Mediterranean Warm Summer), the

Speaking of Mediterranean climates, only two other places in the world
share our wonderful climate: The south coast of South Africa and
the north Mediterranean coast (of course).


>rainfall distribution is pretty erratic. The MEAN rainfall is 14+
>inches, but the MODAL is more like 10 inches (for you non-statisticians,
>the mode is the commonest value. The mean is L.A. is badly skewed by
>occasional 30+ years). If you moved to L.A. in a wet year and built your
>life, farming, and buildings around that higher 30+ rainfall, you'd get a
>real surprise within a couple of years when an 8" year came along.

Speaking of which, I assume 1862 was an example of a "Hundred Year Flood,"
which probably ranks a very distant second as the most feared and anticipated
natural disaster in the Los Angeles area, and since we had no extremely major
flooding since the 1960s (1982/83, 1992 and 1995 being the closest things
from what I remember), is a "hundred year flood" still emminent? Will
it make winter '95 look like a drizzle? Or has it already come and gone
without us noticing?



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