Why is it raining so hard, I thought it never rained in California?
149401
when it rains, it pours.\n\nHope you don't live on/near a hillside.
1049212
Because San Fran is on a major fault line. That basically means that the ground below the streets isn't set properly so it fragments easily to make the Earth subside, and the Earthquakes to occur. I don't know why its like it in the 1st place though?
1167354
So the rain dosent get confused
1062646
Rain, rain, don't go away.\nLet's catch some drops and save some water.
56726
It is a heavy fog that sits on top of water and then comes in on nearby land. Areas like the California delta have it. It is so thick in places you can't see more than a foot in front of you.
565183
I'm originally from the north of England. The weather there is usually pretty mild but it can swing from being severely cold in the winter to being unbearably humid in the summer. That means that the average person has to own a lot of different clothes to deal with different weather. In winter we would wear long coats usually with some form of hood or carry an umbrella as a matter of course in case it rained. Sometimes it  rains there for days at a time and it can be very drizzly or very heavy. In summer everyone wears light clothing and on the hottest, most humid days we would end up wearing shorts and very light shirts. We took going outside for granted. It was normal to want to be in the fresh air!\n\nI lived in San Francisco for three years. The weather there is an almost constant 55 degrees. This means having a smaller amount of clothing and only needing some sort of jacket for the slightly colder winter days. Most of my clothing consisted of shorts and light, short-sleeved shirts. At the weekends the parks and public recreation areas would be completely full of people. The beaches around the area always filled up pretty quickly, even in the fall.\n\nI currently live in Las Vegas. The weather here affects every aspect of our lives. Because the temperature often reaches above 100 degrees, sometimes as high as 125 degrees, people tend to avoid going outside for long periods. People literally get in their cars to go somewhere inside where it's cool, get on with their business, and then get back in the car and go home. Any outdoor activity can be quite unbearable. Parks tend to be crowded in the early hours and after 5:00pm. It is insane to be outdoors in the mid-day heat. Drivers here tend to be on the insane side. People drive way too fast and I believe it has a lot to do with the unbearable hear. Sitting in a car can be most unpleasant, especially one that's been sitting in the sun for a few hours. Another way that people are affected here is because of the dryness. There is usually almost no humidity at all and coupled with the dust this makes for a very bad situation if you suffer from allergies. I've had a few reactions myself and I never suffered before. One way of avoiding the heat in the city is to make day trips to surrounding areas such as Mount Charleston where it tends to be 10-20 degrees cooler. I have to wear formal clothing for my job and I hate it. There are days when it's like sitting in a bath after I've been outside for a considerable time. My boss refers to it as, "sweating bullets." The heat makes for expensive living too as air conditioning is constantly on, in the office, at home, and in the car. During the winter in Las Vegas the temperature can be quite bearable an not too cold. This is when the parks see the most use and people will actually spend more time outside. It's actually exciting when it starts to rain, although we suffer from serious flooding in winter and people die.\n\nI have a couple of friends who are Canadian and they tell me stories of having to switch on their car engine block heaters to prevent damage. I'm sure there are areas in the north of the USA and Canada where it's normal to wear a coat everywhere they go and to want to be indoors for completely the opposite reason that we do. When I was in Chicago I found it interesting how my ears actually burned from being outside. I don't think I've ever experienced temperatures quite that low anywhere.\n\n--\nsf
292918
It tends to be over land, because precipitation forms because of water saturation of the atmosphere; this doesn't really change too much on the open ocean.  But inland, there is a loss of water saturation, therefore clouds containing saturated water will tend to precipitate water (rain).
1025048
Woah!  Stay inside, try to have your car in an elevated area or a garage, and put sandbags near your doors if water leaks under them.  We're supposed to get crazy thunderstorms and hail this afternoon, with tons of rain, too.  Good luck!
421422
It is raining so much in California this year because there is a big storm brewing up near Hawaii. This is a La Nina weather pattern, and it is expected to continue for up to three months.
364665
Southern California for one. It can be arid during the day and cool at night, due to the nearby ocean breezes.  Not quite as cool as you go more inland.
829474
hey i live in so cal and it snows here in winter!! not all so cal is the same
1098784
It's pretty warm where I am compared to Oregon. I'm on vacation and I live in Oregon which was pretty rainy and not that warm when I left. I know what you mean about CA. My family drove down there to the airport and it was SWEATING.
41191
Lately, the weather has been weird in Southern California (near Disneyland).  A few days ago it was really windy and warm.  Today, it was cool and sunny.  Tomorrow will probably be cool and sunny too.  In conclusion, I would say that it would be a pretty good time to come.  I don't think California ever really has terrible weather.  The worst that will happen is it becomes cloudy and might rain for a day, but by the next day, everything will be happy and sunny again.
150463
There are a couple of reasons that work together to explain this situation. The first one has to do with how raindrops form. \n\nNow, it may seem silly to make such an obvious statement as, "Rain always falls from clouds." But once it has been said, we can then ask, "What is going on inside those clouds?" And that question leads us to plenty of relevant information! \n\nDo you remember the last time your local weather was described as being "hot and humid"? Do you remember what it FELT like? Do you also remember what the air LOOKED like? The reason I am asking these questions is because it is important to know that ordinary water is commonly found in one of three forms: solid, liquid, or gas. The liquid form is what we call "water", while the solid form we call "ice", and the gas form we call "water vapor". Water vapor is colorless, odorless, and invisible. But you sure can FEEL it on a hot and humid day! \n\nNext, do you remember the last time you encountered some fog? Think about what IT looked like. If you looked real close, you would have seen zillions of tiny tiny droplets of water floating in the air. And, if you remember the last time you saw some steam, you might think that it looked just like fog (except it was hotter). Steam is NOT pure water vapor! \n\nWell, it happens that the description, "zillions of tiny tiny droplets of water floating in the air", applies to every fog, to every mist, to every burst of steam -- and to every cloud in the sky. If you sit back and simply watch the clouds for a while, you will see that some clouds grow, some shrink, and some do nothing but move across the sky. What is happening to the growing or shrinking clouds? When a cloud grows, water vapor in the air gradually "condenses" to form lots more tiny tiny droplets. When a cloud shrinks, many droplets are completely "evaporating" to become invisible water vapor. \n\nAs the winds move air across the sky, carrying clouds along, fragments of wind known as "eddys" can do strange things to the shapes of clouds. A common game is to study a cloud's shape and guess what it looks like. Also, winds from different directions can collide with each other, which often has great effects upon clouds. It depends on how cold or warm the colliding winds are, and how much water each wind carries (only the differences matter, not whether the water is in the form of vapor or tiny drops). \n\nFor rain to happen, the weather conditions inside the clouds, and surrounding them, has to cause the droplets to grow. Some droplets will grow by colliding and combining with each other -- just what you Asked about. Some droplets will grow by acquiring more and more water vapor from the air. Some will do both. But the important thing to remember now is that MOST of the droplets in the clouds grow at the same time! \n\nBUT, the droplets do not all grow at the same rate; some grow faster than others. As soon as ANY get big enough, they start to fall out of the cloud. Water is heavier than air, after all. Depending on the wind conditions, those first raindrops might be blown back up into the cloud, where they can grow some more. Eventually, however, they get too big to stay up in the air, so they fall all the way to the ground. And the slower-growing droplets will fall after them, and the slower-growing-yet droplets will fall after THEM, and so on. This is the essence of the raining process. \n\nAs I said at the start, there are a couple of reasons why the raindrops don't combine to make a single stream. The first reason is simply that raindrops start falling just as soon as they are too heavy to stay in the air. The second reason is that they are all falling together DOWNWARDS, not sideways. If the wind blows them sideways, they all move TOGETHER sideways. That isn't good enough to cause them to meet each other, while falling, so they could combine to form a si
332584
It's probably a coincidence.  If you were where the earthquake happened, I would say you are one of the rare people who are sensitive to the subsonic waves that often precede and earthquake.\n\nI mean look at this map: http://quake.usgs.gov/recenteqs/index.html .  In the past week there were 285 earthquakes in California and Nevada.  Any day you had some pain you could have found an earthquake, possibly happening within minutes.\n\nBut it is possible to feel things in the bones, especially changes in the weather.  In the joints, there is something called sinovial fluid, and it has small bubbles of nitrogen.  Changes in atmospheric pressure can cause pain, especially in arthritic joints.
816293
My God makes the weather, of course I believe in Him with all my heart.  Here in Texas we have rain, heat, sleet, a little snow, lots of dryness, but have never had "ethical" weather.  what is it exactly?
1035040
The reason it doesn't rain is because the area is located under an almost permanent high pressure system.\n\nThat is because the surface air rises at the equator due to the higher temperatures. As the equatorial air rises it cools and the water condenses out and fall as rain. The cold air then falls back to the surface in those two sub-equatorial belts. The air at this stage is depleted of all moisture, and because the air is falling it creates a high pressure system that prevents rain producing weather systems from developing.\n\nThat is a fairly simplistic summary of some complex weather systems, but it suffices to explain why most of the Arabian Peninsula is desert.