Weather In The Foothills

By far, the biggest showstopper of the week was the incredible weather we had in the foothills.  The torrential rains resulted in flooding and road closures, wind gusts caused power outages, and amazing snowstorms brought us all together for fun and frolic.  How heartwarming to see people helping each other when things were rough.  What a delight to hear families emerge from their homes to see the snow falling, perhaps for the first time ever.  Every remarkable event that took place, stirred excitement as we shared stories and photos.  It felt like a reset for the community.

Having grown up here at the base of our lovely mountains, I can only remember five times when I saw snow falling at home.  Sure, there were plenty of times when Camel’s Back mountain was covered in snow and we would hop in the car and head to the canyon to enjoy the white stuff but it rarely touched down in our neighborhood. 

We did have substantial snow in 1961, however.  My parents had movies of Parr Avenue homes that showed every lawn covered solid white with scattered snowmen standing guard.  At Sunland Elementary when I was about 9 years old, I saw snow falling from the window of my classroom but we weren’t allowed to go play in it.  By the time school was let out, it had stopped. 

When I was a young adult, I came home one night from a class in the San Fernando Valley to a yard covered in slushy snow.  I was sorry to have missed it falling and my pet duck named Beep, was terribly unhappy that I left her out in the cold.  She could have easily moved inside to her wooden pen but squawked at me, nonetheless.  I brought her inside to warm up. 

There was the time during the 1990s in La Crescenta when it started to snow at 10:00 at night.  Our little boys had gone to bed but knowing that it rarely snows in the foothills, we got them up and had a wonderful nighttime snowball fight.  My last recollection of falling snow was in the first decade of the 2000s, when husband, Jeff and our daughter came out of the grocery store to a surprisingly heavy snow that lasted for about a half an hour.  They left the groceries in the car while our whole family including our dog, Coco, ran around and played.

It seems that so many of my vivid memories, the ones that really stick with me, are either weather or natural disaster related.  I can remember so clearly the rains in 1969 that tore out both the bridge at Riverwood Ranch and the one on Foothill around where Angeles National Golf Club exists today.  People were stranded and it took a long time to repair those bridges.  There was the 1971 earthquake that did a lot of damage to our house.  I remember the strong aftershocks but mainly the foot of food and dish debris in the kitchen and the five fish tanks that all broke, spilling fish and glass into the wet, family room carpet.  We were evacuated during the 1975 fire that ravaged Big Tujunga Canyon.  This was followed by several years of floods that floated caskets down from the Verdugo Hills Cemetery in 1978 and my mom getting knocked down by flood waters in 1980 by what we called “Ellenbogen River.”  She was alright but bruised while the car she had been driving, floated into the wash.

After years of crazy “weather,” it was refreshing to experience this recent snowstorm, together as a community.  I have never seen anything quite like it in my neighborhood.  I won’t soon forget how I felt seeing the San Gabriel mountains completely covered in snow.  The Verdugo Hills even had a dusting.  What a joy to behold.

Susan Bolan 

susanbolan710@gmail.com