Rain in L.A.: love it, hate it, fear it

By next week, the hills will have made their transition from brown tinder to bright-green carpet, the first promise of colorful wildflowers to come after several dry years. In the fire-bared canyons of the Angeles National Forest, the slopes either will show the first signs of recovery, as the seeds of annual plants begin to sprout, or will become disaster zones for the second time since last summer, with thick waves of mud sliding downhill and possibly onto homes. It’s hard for most of the country -- the regions that regularly receive plentiful rain and/or snow -- to understand Southern California’s dysfunctional love-hate-fear relationship with rain. Will we ever get enough, or will we get too much?

This week’s storms will make us stop worrying for a while about which days and hours we can water our gardens. Brush-fire danger will fall into the nil category. The blasts of rain will wash our cars and cleanse the basin’s air, and we’ll suddenly notice we’re taking deeper breaths. Then we’ll remember that some of our neighbors next to the Angeles National Forest are holding their breath, sick with worry that their homes will be deluged with mud and rock. Houses along parts of the coast already have been damaged. The surf will turn foul with oil and bacteria from urban runoff. Homes along the lower coastal areas will probably flood once again.

We depend year to year on receiving rain. With few year-round creeks or ponds, undeveloped areas dry to crispness after a single season of low precipitation. And yet, no matter how much rain we get, there’s always a price to pay. If we get too little, the hills become all the more desiccated, making for an especially dangerous fire season the next summer and fall. Too much and the plants grow lushly -- which means that when they dry out, there’s far more fuel, which makes for an especially dangerous . . . you get the picture.

We’re drenched in both optimism and concern right now. Maybe the drought will end -- for a year, anyway -- and in February we can rush out to catch a lavish but fleeting flower season in the desert. Maybe people will be hurt by accidents, floods or slides, which can occur months after heavy rain. Both scenarios might happen. Rain is a costly gift in our town.