One of the things I was pleased about when moving to California was the nice weather. After living in the Chicagoland suburbs in Illinois for nearly my entire life (and when I didn’t live there, I lived one state up north while attending undergraduate university in a location that had the exact same weather as Chicago), I got sick of rain and snow. I still appreciate rain once in a while because of how much it helps all natural living things, but I still want some long-term nice weather.

If you’re not aware already, southern California is in a state of moderate drought. It’s getting nowhere near the rain it’s apparently supposed to be getting, and most of the rivers have dried up to be long strips of sand.

But not when I’m here.

I’m pretty sure it has randomly rained and stormed an average of at least once a week since I’ve been here. Such as today, when I dropped off one friend to Los Angeles International Airport and another friend back home, for a total of approximately 2.5 hours’ worth of driving. But because it’s raining and Californians are so unused to having wet driving conditions, I’m pretty sure the trip took over 4 hours.

Because it rains so often in Illinois and it pretty much blizzards every winter, everyone there is pretty comfortable driving in poor weather conditions. Californians, who normally drive around 80 MPH (130 KPH) on the freeway, slow down to 45 MPH (70 KPH) in the rain. I’m pretty sure the real danger isn’t actually in the rain, but rather, in the fact that everyone is moving so unexpectedly slowly.