What The Hell is Happening on The West Coast? Portland is Covered in Ice and San Diego is Under Water
All I've heard about weatherwise for the past couple weeks is how god damn cold Chicago is. All of my co-worker friends in the midwest have been heroically battling the elements every day. "Oh no poor us. It's 0 degrees outside. My face gets so cold on my commute to the fantasy factory office where we get extravagent free lunches every day." That sounds tragic and all. My thoughts and prayers are with Nicky Smokes. But that's at best the 3rd most disasterous of the weather related happenings in America right now. Because based on the videos I've been seeing, living in Chicago right now is a cake walk compared to what's going down on the west coast.
Maybe I've been living under a rock. Or maybe this type of weather in places like Portland and San Diego is more common than I realize. But based on the videos I've been seeing, the west coast our country is in the midst of a disaster.
We'll start with the less disastrous situation. There was an ice storm in Portland. I was scrolling TikTok the other day, as adults do, and I came across 'Portland Ice Tok'. By now the worst of the ice is behind them, but the videos dating back to last week are madness. The city was nearly rendered unlivable.
I understand people still need to live their lives, but the fact that anybody is trying to drive on those roads is insane. You're fucked as soon as your car comes across the slightest decline. Again, I don't know if this happens in Portland all the time. Maybe this is par for the course in January. It's probably not that exceptionally rare in the Pacific Northwest to have the roads covered in ice. Maybe it's especially bad in Portland because roads aren't getting the preventative treatment they deserve since the entire city has been turned into one big autonomous zone by now. No idea. But according to the videos I've seen on the internet, the whole place was an icy death trap.
Now if you drive a thousand miles south down I-5 you'll stumble upon the city of San Diego. San Diego has things signifcantly worse than Portland. Since it never gets below 70 degrees in San Diego, instead of being covered in ice, the whole city is underwater.
Now those are real problems. In Portland, as long as you stay put at home, nothing terrible will happen (probably). In San Diego, you might wake up one day to your truck being washed away from your driveway and into the middle of the Pacific Ocean. It's actual scary stuff. San Diegans aren't meant to deal with weather like this. People move there specifcially so they never have to deal with anything outside of a sunny 60-80 degree window. It's scary to the point where I probably shouldn't joke about it because there's a ton of people in San Diego who's lives are extremely fucked right now.
So how about that weather? I thought those videos were crazy enough that they deserved a blog. Be careful out there people. Mother nature is pissed this month.