Southern Californians: Weatherists or Highly-Adapted Desert-Dwellers?

Some would call us spoiled… we would argue that there’s something biological about it; that there's something in our DNA that comes from years of adapting to life in what is essentially a desert. Kind of like those desert-dwelling kangaroo rats who can survive without drinking water… ever.

But we digress…

The truth of the matter is that rain is just not on our radar and therefore most Southern Californians are completely unprepared when Mother Nature serves up anything but 70+ degrees and sunny. A quick count through the Buzztime office has shown that roughly 50% of us own umbrellas... about the same number who own what can be called a "winter coat". Look for people who actually own a raincoat and you may be somewhere in the 10% range. Not surprisingly, every member of that 10% is a transplant from more weather-tolerant regions.

Conversely, about 15% of us showed up in flip flops at least one day during the storm. The reason: we don’t own closed-toe shoes, boots or Wellies. (We know you'll be shocked to read that these particular 15% are all Southern California natives.)

Ironically, we're the same people who handle disasters like earthquakes and wildfires with a seasoned professionalism that sometimes borders on boredom. People mention earthquakes and we yawn. Heck, half the time we don’t even feel them. But throw a few inches of rain on our roads and day-to-day life comes to a standstill ,with people hunkering down, glued to their TVs to monitor the minute-to-minute lowdown from “Storm Watch 2010.” Now, in our defense, the words tornado, hail and thunderstorm were all used in the same sentence several times… not the most comforting series of nouns that we can think of.

So how do we cope?

1. We skip work. (“I’m not getting on those roads!”)

2. We complain A LOT via Twitter, Facebook, Blog, E-mail, text message, and old fashioned top-of-our-lungs temper tantrum. If we could write it in the sky, we’d do that too. (If all the planes weren't grounded because we're afraid to fly in the rain.)

3. We eat and drink. (Just in case the rain lasts for more than (gasp!) a week and we have to hibernate, which is the logical next step.)

The point of all of this? We know.

We know that you’re all laughing at us; that you find us high-maintenance and spoiled; that our sense of entitlement borders on obnoxious. We’re okay with this, because we know the truth: We can’t help it… it’s just in our DNA.

| More...