Rain Brain

I'm not necessarily in the debunking business; but man, do I catch a lot of wild lines, mostly from other agents who don't seem to know what they're selling, or much about the place they're selling it in. While not necessarily related to real estate, there's no refrain that bugs me more than: 'Los Angeles is a desert'.

Los Angeles is not a desert, never was a desert, no matter the taunts of cackling San Franciscans apparently oblivious to the climate differences between las playas and Las Vegas. In point of fact, Los Angeles is a coastal plain with a climate categorized as 'Mediterranean'. The traditional geographer's definition of a desert is a place wherein the annual rainfall is no greater than 25 cms. While precipitation totals in Los Angeles are highly variable, the downtown average is nonetheless closer to 38 cms. a year (15" inches).

Early photographs of the terrain seem to show scrub and plant life more commonly associated with the chaparral biome, wildflowers and fields of clover. Not exactly, towering sand dunes and Socorro Cactus.

Still, the desert mythology persists, with doomsdayers prophesing sandy reclamation. As if, in the absence, of political pilfer and Owens Valley elutriation, a withered, evaporation-scarred top surface would displace the black, loamy soil, denuded by vengeful Santa Ana winds.

Listen to the early So-Cal boosters who promised a fertile, edenic, Shangri-la. Ok, that may be artistic excess; still, Yuma we ain't!