Things have gone from bad to worse in California. Only last month, the state was suffering from drought conditions. Now, they’re suffering from too much of a good thing. A yearly storm phenomenon known as the Pineapple Express has arrived, and rather than gracing California with some much-needed rain, it has decided to brutalize the state with flooding. California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger has declared a state of emergency for California in the wake of severe rains and flooding. Some areas have gotten 21 inches of rain over the last 5 days, and mudslide conditions are at their peak.
“It’s been raining from two days ago and it just has not stopped. They closed a lot of the roads down,” said 39-year-old Deborah Craigo, a mother and college student in Hesperia, California, located in the Mojave Desert. “It’s pretty bad now. We have a riverbed in back of our house, and two days ago it was completely bone dry. And then within two days the riverbed is completely full.”
California has a lot of experience with terrible conditions, but this is pretty rough even for them. Their disaster experience is more earthquakes, engineering mistakes, and giant squid, not torrential rains. Good luck, you guys; don’t drive through the high water!
Image: CBC
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