It was easy to be alarmed by the U.S. Geological Survey's recent prediction that a catastrophic winter storm—statistically improbable yet inevitable—would pummel the Golden State with a month of hurricane-force winds and up to 10 feet of accumulated rainfall. (See "5 Things You Need to Know About the ARkStorm, California's Other 'Big One'".) Especially since the scientists' warning followed the wettest December on record in Los Angeles since 1889, during what was supposed to be a dry La Nina winter. Only months before, on September 29, downtown Los Angeles experienced its hottest daytime temperature ever of 113 degrees.
L.A. weather may or may not be getting more unpredictable, but extreme weather has always been a part of Southern California life—if an infrequent one. The artifacts of those events live in the archives of Southern California's libraries, museums, and other cultural institutions.
Keep reading the full post, "Snow in the Basin: Documenting the Extremes of SoCal Weather" on the KCET website.