The skies are back to their usual bright blue with the shining sun drying away evidence of the havoc it wreaked across campus on Tuesday. Students are back to their typical Southern California wardrobe: geometric sunglasses, a graphic t-shirt, shorts and low-top sneakers, tucking away their raincoat back into hibernation until next time’s rain.
On such a day with darkened clouds threatening almost two inches of heavy rain, many students had to brave the storm and go to class under the weather for once. For Alden Ducharme, a first-year Ph.D student in Education who grew up sometimes walking to school in minus-10-degree weather on the East Coast, Californian reactions were shocking.
“I was texting the rest of my cohort, asking why everyone was freaking out about the rain warnings. I was getting flood warnings, thunderstorm warnings for an inch and a half, and to me that’s like nothing,” said Ducharme. “I was like, is there something I’m missing? And then I got on the road, and it was like all hell broke loose.”
Ducharme’s 25-minute drive to campus had doubled due to heavy traffic and flooding on freeways. He noted multiple cars pulled off to the side of the road. Before coming to Los Angeles, he was unfamiliar with multi-lane highways, and even more unfamiliar with drivers who forget how to use them the moment it rains.
“It was like the right lane was going like 30 miles an hour and the left lane was still going like 70, 80,” he said. “And the GPS, I’d never seen it do this before, it kept rerouting me. It wanted me to get off the highway, get back on, get off, get back on.”
Other students trekked along newly formed rivers flowing down the roads just to make it to campus, enduring the storm’s wrath with nothing but their backpacks and misplaced confidence.
“Everything got soaked,” said sophomore Sydney Sasaki. “There was a hole in my shoe and I got water in it. My left foot was just soaking the entire day.”
Sasaki did not go to her second class.
Some students refused to weather the storm at all because they didn’t have their L.A. essential: an umbrella they’ll only use twice a year.
“I just didn’t have one, so I was like, I’m not about to go out,” said Zoe Powell, a junior psychology student who was grateful to have the rest of her classes on Zoom. Powell took advantage of the rare weather and opened her windows to turn the pattering of rain into her study playlist.
Ducharme mentioned that suddenly everyone turned into a “weather alarmist,” stocking up on products and stressing over a two-inch rain storm.
“My friends and classmates were like, ‘Oh my God, I think it’s going to rain next week,” he said. “And then as it got closer, they’re like, ‘Make sure you close all of your windows,’ and they were giving strategies on what routes to take to get to school and how to navigate driving, as if it were like a hurricane.”
Though there was no hurricane, Sid Sarabia, a facilities maintenance employee, was working the frontlines at 6:30 a.m., raking away debris to clear weather drains so students could make it to class without sacrificing their shoes.
“I don’t like rain,” Sarabia said. “I think we’re just used to it because we’re first responders,” said Sarabia. “We’re the ones that have to deal with the issues when it comes to clogged drains or leaks in buildings.”
Now that the sun is back and all is right in the world again, students will keep fighting on — rain or shine.