For the past few weeks, Southern California has been under a barrage of extreme and unusual winter storms—storms whose volume, rapid succession, and bizarre outgrowths would seem out of place in New York City or Chicago, let alone in a region that has spent several years rationing water to withstand droughts.
In mid-January, days of “relentless rain” sent residents scrambling to avoid floods, mudslides, and debris. The Biden administration declared a state of emergency in California over what the Los Angeles Times reported could amount to the year’s first “billion-dollar disaster.”
