Locals panic when temperatures dip below 60°F and infrastructure buckles under the first inch of rain. Does growing up in LA's sunshine bubble create a city of people who genuinely can't cope — or is that just a cliché from jealous people in colder climates?
Join the debate to comment
Reading is free. Members pay to post — that's why it stays clean.
Add your commentMy favorite memory is from 2019 when there was like one inch of snow on the hills above Pasadena and people were legitimately driving up the 210 to go LOOK AT IT like it was Yosemite. We filled the car, packed snacks, took photos. Was it embarrassing? Probably. Was it also the most fun our family had that whole winter? Absolutely yes. I refuse to be ashamed of this.
Born and raised in Koreatown. My abuela used to laugh every time it rained because the news would go FULL disaster coverage over like half an inch of drizzle. But you know what? We dealt with the Northridge quake, we dealt with the '92 riots, we dealt with wildfire smoke so thick you couldn't breathe outside for weeks. Angelenos know hardship. It just doesn't come wearing a snowstorm costume.
I think people confuse "unprepared for specific weather events" with "emotionally weak" and those are not the same thing at all. I grew up in Silver Lake. I've had friends lose homes in the Woolsey Fire. I've gone through periods where the air quality index was literally OFF THE CHART hazardous. My cousin lost everything in the Eaton Fire just this past January. So please, explain to me again how we don't know hardship because we're not shoveling snow.
Moved here from Chicago three years ago and honestly? Yeah, a little bit true. I put on a light jacket the first December here and my coworkers looked at me like I was auditioning for a Patagonia commercial. One guy showed up to the office in a Canada Goose parka when it was 57 degrees. I didn't say anything. I smiled. I will always smile about this.
^^^ That is absolutely not true. London gets roughly 23-24 inches of rain per year, LA gets around 14-15. You're thinking of the stereotype that London is always rainy, which is partly about gray overcast days, not actual precipitation volume. But LA definitely gets significantly less rain. Source: I literally teach earth science at a high school in Van Nuys.
Okay but can we talk about the RAIN DRIVING? I have never in my life been more terrified than when it sprinkled on the 405 last February. People either slow to 12 mph or decide that's the perfect moment to go 90. There is no in between. The infrastructure thing is genuinely real — our storm drains literally weren't built for real rainfall because it was just never supposed to matter. That's a city planning failure, not a character failure.
The real issue isn't the people, it's the infrastructure and civic institutions. City planners never invested in proper drainage because why would they — it barely rains. Roads aren't designed for temperature swings. There's no snow removal equipment because there's no snow. When a rare event hits, systems fail not because residents are soft but because nobody built redundancy for scenarios that happen once a decade. Blame the planning, not the population.
this take is so tired lol. oh wow angelenos cant handle cold. cool. can people in minnesota handle a magnitude 6.4 earthquake or watching their neighborhood burn down in november? hardship isn't just weather. it takes different forms and we get PLENTY of it here.
Actually Los Angeles gets more rain annually than London, England — so the idea that Angelenos never deal with rain is completely false when you think about it. People need to check their facts before posting these kinds of generalizations.
Is it wrong to choose not to have children just because you don't want to?
110 comments
Would you still eat meat if you had to kill the animal yourself?
109 comments
Are dating apps genuinely harder for men or for women?
108 comments
Is judging someone by their height as shallow as judging by their weight?
108 comments