I was disappointed last week when the season’s first big El Niño event was scheduled to arrive. Mother Nature lost her day-planner this year. After a spring lasting 18.3 minutes, 2026 has been pummeled by relentless heat. Long-forgotten Signal Editor A.B. Thatcher wrote about an old cowboy stopping by the office in 1932. The wrangler shared an ancient joke about witnessing a coyote chasing a rabbit. Punchline? It was it was so darn hot, both were walking.
Since February, I tirelessly check weather reports for the hope of precipitation. We had a positive gullywumper in early September here, dropping a monsoonal 0.01 inch (less, in some parts of the Santa Clarita Valley). During the epic downfall of mid-April, the rain gauge combined a quarter inch. Last week’s spritzing? Letdown. I scrambled to bring in the backyard lounge chair cushions. Shouldn’t’ve.
Still. The day after any year’s first rain is glorious. Off a trillion leaves, light poles, mail boxes and old truck windshields, Nature’s version of bottled water washes away summer’s dust. Lingering clouds and small cool breezes bring both a smile and sigh to the heart. No matter politics or Parisian riots, rain is a reminder that God’s in heaven and all’s right with the world.
I’ve ambivalent feelings toward distant neighbors, living on Nature’s soggy porch. Watching recent video footage of giant waves crashing over beachfront houses made me wince. Life is timeless and idyllic with a calm Pacific Ocean right outside your window. Day in, year out, it must be grand to watch, from a back window, the sun set in the distant west or start the day, all bundled up, with a reflective walk along a gloomy beach with 3-inch surf. As a teen at Hart, friends and I would head out after Friday night’s football game to spend a weekend on the sands of Bates Road at the Ventura/Santa Barbara county line. We’d fill pickups and cavernous car trunks with firewood and cheap folding lawn chairs, ice chests, guitars, blankets, dogs, dog food, sleeping bags, towels and big bags of potato chips back when they cost 65 cents. I’m smiling. It’s nice to wax nostalgic, but, adjusted for inflation, that 65-cent bag o’ chips works out to $7.63 in today’s prices.
I remember thinking, as we drove past homes of the mysterious well-off, that they were courting danger, building so close to an often vengeful Poseidon. Storms were always a threat. But, even in my youth, I calculated that Winter’s tantrums would not compare to that one, epic, not Storm Of The Century, but rather, the Storm Of A Thousand Years. It was only a matter of time.
Fast forward to 2026. I watched helicopter newsclips of waves crashing over roofs and storm surge rushing inland, flooding shops and garages. Evacuation from Paradise. Carefully maintained asphalt walkways are now sleeping offshore. People ask, “Where’s the sand?” Sixty years ago, I’m a teenager, the complete package of a mop of curly thick hair, washboard stomach, 74% raging hormones and the rest giggles. Still. Was I the only person in California to question: “Is it really such a wise idea to build a house or crab café right next to a body of water that measures volume in, literally, 333-million cubed miles? How much does one 20-foot wave — weigh? Countless tie-wearing alleged grown-ups OK’d plans to build — not next to, but, underneath — the thundering surf.
It’s easy to get all self-righteous, to blame water sprites and ocean gods punishing humanity for all its wickedness. Years ago, I had the neatest conversation with a docent at the La Misión de La Señora Santa Bárbara, Virgen y Mártir, or, as we gringos call it, Mission Santa Barbara. She shared that the Dec. 21, 1812, tidal wave triggered an offshore tsunami that washed all the way inland, inundating the chapel. That’s almost 2 miles — inland. On a big hill.
Rarely is the year where some section of scenic Highway 1, from Cambria to Carmel, isn’t closed. Highway 1 may be the most beautiful road in the entire world. It meanders through forests and farmland, hugging the coast. Due to hillside collapses and the road just vanishing, Highway 1 has been closed 55 times since its opening in 1937. The storms of 2022 and 2023 completely shut down the highway. Every year, hundreds of millions are spent repairing, rebuilding, redirecting.
Humanity’s superrich own estates, some valued at nine figures, along the occasionally concreted ribbon. A few years back, every — that’s every as in every — carrier refused to issue insurance. But, I guess if you’re a billionaire, you can just grumble, summon the government and write a personal check to fill in a monstrous pothole.
With much amusement, I’ve watched decades of hair-pulling weathermen, predicting the end of life and civilization from the next predicted grey cloud. My all-time favorite was a KABC Man-on-the-Street interview in Beverly Hills. On a misty day, they stopped a yuppie in a polo shirt and asked how he was prepping for the incoming 1/64th inch of rain. Belt-level, underneath him, Channel 7 ran the huge caption: “RAIN VICTIM.”
To be sure, every rainy season, these poor souls do exist. They lose home or business to the whimsy of a shifting and dissolving planet. Some are dumb or optimistic enough to plant a house where not even a tug boat belongs. La Canada? Malibu? Saugus? How much rain will this Mother Of All El Niños bring? Those in the weather business hedge their predictions with the standard, “…rainfall totals may vary …”
Toward the end of World War II, The Mighty Signal boldly displayed a front-page headline — “NEWHALL STARTS SECOND YARD OF RAIN!”
After the clouds part, my daughter and I will again visit the Pacific. I hope she doesn’t ask that Once-In-10,000-Years question …
“Dad . . . Where did all the beaches go?”
Do pick up “Naked Came the Novelist,” John Boston’s sequel to the international bestseller, “Naked Came the Sasquatch,” at JohnBoston-Books.com. A lifelong SCV resident with 119 major writing awards and nearly 12,000 columns, Boston is Earth history’s most prolific humorist and satirist.
