u/Apesma69

C'mon, Torrance! We gotta stop the rising MAGA tide. That means voting out Chen, Matucci & Kaji. We can do this!

Anyone know more about this? Shot this from my home near Hawthorne & Del Amo about 10 minutes ago.

13 bedrooms, 20 baths on 3 acres. This place is mere minutes away from my house, which looks like a potato shed in comparison to this. :)

https://www.zillow.com/homedetails/1129-Via-Mirabel-Palos-Verdes-Estates-CA-90274/21342907_zpid/

The other day I learned about a devastating event that happened in Torrance in 1956 and wound up going down the rabbit hole. Nearly nine inches of rain fell over the course of 2 days on January 25th & 26th, causing catastrophic flooding across the area. As a weather nerd, I dug deep and consulted with fellow nerds and learned that it was due to an atmospheric river that stalled over the city and surrounding towns. 

The governor declared Torrance a disaster area. it was an all-hands-on-deck situation, where the National Guard, Red Cross, coast guards, LA county lifeguards, police & fire departments were all called in to assist with rescues. Amazingly, no one died directly from the floods though there were some indirect deaths (car accidents, etc). 

Torrance was still pretty agricultural back then so the damage was not as extensive as it would be if this were to happen today. But the city was in the midst of a building boom as post-war housing was being constructed on tracts of land throughout the region so a number of houses were flooded.

One truly shocking aerial image shows the entire area from Hawthorne Blvd & Lomita Blvd underwater all the way up to the base of the peninsula foothills, extending west towards the Riviera! They called it "the Walteria Lake!" 

The enormity and severity of this event spurned Torrance into action and the city has gone to great lengths to mitigate flooding ever since, hence the series of sumps that act as catch basins dotting the area.

Sources:

Torrance Herald archives

https://www.torranceca.gov/Government/About-Torrance/History/History-of-Torrance/Torrance-History-1950s

https://sbhistoryblog.wordpress.com/2022/03/18/the-1956-deluge-that-swamped-torrance-and-forced-flood-control-improvements/

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3JdZnlj7nN4

https://youtu.be/2PDFv4pTlDE?si=rsVIcWVJgqasSNLB

https://www.sacbee.com/news/california/article315495971.html

From Wikipedia - a widely-distributed free-floating colonial animal that lives on the surface of the open ocean. It is commonly known by the names sea raft, by-the-wind sailor, purple sail, little sail, or simply Velella https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Velella