It Never Rains In Southern California--At Least On New Year's Day

It's another beautiful, clear sunny day here in Los Angeles. This is something like the 55th time in 56 years, that Rose Parade and Rose Bowl are being held under dry weather conditions. That's quite a feat as very few cities can make such a statement about their New Year's Day weather. Indeed, Los Angeles can't make the same statement about any other day--e.g., December 31 or January 2, which have often seen rainy days. It's truly a happy coincidence that it is always dry and usually sunny on New Year's Day as the world tunes in to watch the Rose Parade and the Rose Bowl game. Now as my dad used to say, it really isn't a coincidence. His theory was that good weather on New Year's Day is part of what he called a psychic structure--essentially everybody here believes there will be good weather for the parade and game, and presto, here it is. That sounded hokey to me, but on the other hand maybe there's something to that after seeing year after year of good weather go by.

An interesting sidebar arose five years ago when our 50 year streak of rainless New Year's was about to be broken. The local weather station, KNX, had contracted its weather forecasts out to the Weather Channel, whose meteoreologists would banter with the news anchors as if they were in studio, even though they were actually sitting in Atlanta, and at times were unfamiliar with things Los Angeles. So when the news anchor introduced the weatherman with the comment about rain coming on New Year's Day, the weatherman replied "I love it when it rains on New Year's.". Well since it hadn't rained on New Year's in Los Angeles since 1955, he clearly revealed himself to be a stranger to these parts, though the local anchor quickly said something like, "Well as you know it hasn't rained here on New Year's in decades." Actually I found comments like this from the out of town metereologists to be rather annoying and actually wrote the radio station to complain. Not too long after that they swtiched to using weather people from the local TV station instead.

So we're really enjoying today's wonderful weather--especially since it's supposed to rain tomorrow.