Flash flooding

When I hear about what happened in Kentucky where people died in the massive monsoon floods out of Mexico and Arizona monsoons coming to Kentucky from the Pacific Ocean and the Gulf of Mexico I think about my own experiences with flash flooding.

Here are the two worst and amazing experiences I have ever had in California. Of course, this was likely the first one in the 1960s while my father and I drove his truck from Glendale over the Angeles Crest Highway to Pearblossom highway and across to Lucerne Valley by way of Victorville towards Yucca Valley. We went this way to avoid Los Angeles Traffic jams then in the 1960s and 1970s. The problem became apparent between Lucerne Valley and Yucca Valley on California highway 247. 

At that time we called this road a "Whoopie! Road" simply because you could drive so fast that the tops of the hills after the dips you could get your car air born if you drove fast enough. We wouldn't do this with my Dad's work truck because it was an electrical truck with a utility body for an Electrical Contractor which my Dad was at the time. However, there had been the worst flash flooding we had ever seen in the dips of this road. 

Then this guy passed us doing about 90 or 100 at that time out in the desert and chose to drive through 4 feet deep water in one of these dips in the road at this speed. Luckily it didn't kill him it just wrecked his car by bending up the front fenders and hood up against his windshield. So, when we came upon him after he passed us we realized he had destroyed his car completely by doing this through about 4 feet of water in the dip of the road. So, this was the most amazing experience of this kind I ever saw and luckily it wasn't our car or truck that had been destroyed.

The next experience regarding Flash flooding was when I had bought my brand new Camaro in 1968 when I was 20. So, this likely happened around 1969. I was tootling around on paved roads near Yucca Mesa above Yucca Valley when I noticed a wall of water coming down from the mountains of Big Bear Towards me. I was at first terrified I was going to die but instead I just burned rubber and spun the car around on the paved road and hightailed it out of there before I was going sideways across the desert on a wall of water.

So, whenever you are in the desert and especially if you are in the desert near a range of mountains you need to be watching for clouds up to 50 miles away. Because especially where mounatains and deserts meet in California it is really really dangerous when a whole bunch of rain comes down with nowhere to go but to off you and everyone else nearby it. 

The other thing is don't climb into desert dry washes if anything within about 25 to 50 miles of you looks like it could be raining or else it might be the last thing you ever do. Because dry washes might be dry 90% of the time but not all the time and when rains come down they are one of the most dangerous places to be in California.