A Bitch Named Hilary

Windy. All wet. Over-hyped. Unwanted. Bringing nothing but misery. Stop me if you've heard this one.

Except this isn't the criminal maven of Little Rock, it's the once-per-century Cat 4 (currently) hurricane rolling up the Baja California coast and set to cross right over the most populous stretch of the CA coast from San Diego to L.A. from Sunday night to Monday morning. Bummer for Sea World and Disneyland, but that's the breaks.

Baja, especially Ensenada, looks to be going to get royally hosed. You won't hear as much about that, because they're Mexicans, but those people living in shithole shacks and on trash heaps up countless canyons down there are about to get washed away, and make 150 or so dead Hawaiian citizens look like a sorority pillow fight by comparison. I'll be amazed if it doesn't wipe out hundreds of them.

But the media, breathlessly gearing up for a real live Califrutopia catastrophe - with 48 hrs notice, unlike an earthquake - will focus on the SoCal part, where by the time it reaches us, it won't be the Cat 4 hurricane, it'll be a rapidly weakening tropical storm with 50-60MPH winds...IOW, a wet Santa Ana wind, from the other direction; and 2-6 inches of rain, which will overwhelm the flood control channels and storm drains due to rapidity, not volume, and flood some intersections and lows spots on the freeways.

The deserts to the east of L.A. are in for a rough flash flood time, more than likely.

Power may even go down in spots for a day or so.

Otherwise, a rare instance of August rain hereabouts.

I was picking up mail this morning, and the supermarket next door saw every person coming out with bundles of bottled water and batteries. BTDTGTTS. I'd make fun of them for waiting until now, but at least they're getting them ahead of time. The real idiots are the folks with nothing, who won't even make that little effort to take care of themselves beforehand.

I'll be on duty Sunday night in the ER as it crosses the border, so it'll be raining from before I head in, until the end of my shift, if the NWS has things right.

I predict a lot of nothing at work: people will stay home in droves, mostly. Probably call out sick Monday too.

But there's definitely a silver lining I can see on the horizon: any number of homeless wastrels camping in river beds washed out to sea and fed to sharks and crabs, which will cleanse the local river systems for some weeks. Expect to see dramatic news footage of some meth-head dipshit being winched to safety when his dirt island in the middle of the Santa Ana or San Gabriel or L.A. River floods away, in a stirring and melodramatic waste of taxpayer time and money. But it keeps the fire guys in practice.

We'll probably also lose some Mcmansions on hillsides where houses should never have been built in the first place, and Eyewitless News will try to tug heartstrings when millionaires who should have known better get to pay for their view, and live like common folks for a couple of weeks at the Hilton, like they do in the winter every rainy season. Boo frickin' hoo. News flash: gravity works, and adobe hills become adobe washes at the bottom, just like every year since 0.

Assuming power, I'll post an after-action Monday. Otherwise, I'm more worried about - and at greater risk from - the jackholes on the freeway to and from work than I am about the coming deluge/windstorm. Unless NWS gets it gloriously wrong, we get an actual hurricane coming ashore in SoCal, storm surge and all, and this turns into an Irwin Allen/Michael Bay wet dream. Literally.

If I wasn't working that night, I'd put on a burlap robe and Father Time beard - and a life jacket - and carry a sign that said "The End Is Coming" through downtown L.A., just to scare the bejeezus out of the weak-minded.

Dollars to donuts some local station will decide to program a showing of Evan Almighty or Noah (if not both) Sunday night. Comedy gold, right there.