Reader’s Rant: Comparing OB’s Storm Drains to La Jolla’s

By Trever Richardson / Thu, Feb 1, 2024

I am a 4th generation Ocean Beach resident and have personally seen my share of flooding over the years. I saw the Lamborghini submerged in the parking garage on Abbott in 2015. And last week I saw the renters crying as they were stranded on that very same building with an underground parking structure—turned watery moat. As a self declared weather enthusiast I pay attention to the happenings of El Niño and the jet stream.

That brings us to today. As this winter storm approached, I lingered around Abbott and Santa Monica waiting for the deluge of water. Fortunately, the rainfall never reached the torrential threshold to cause flooding like we saw last week.

However, still thirsting for flood viewing, I opened my prosumer radar app “Radar Scope” and found a large cell of heavy rain headed straight for La Jolla. With the prospect of witnessing more atmospheric delights I abandoned my post en route to La Jolla.

I first headed east up Newport and when I arrived at Bacon I found a pretty good sized flow that almost satiated my appetite for flooding. The intersection of Newport and Bacon, where Pizzeria Luigi’s is known to make a mean pie, is a known hotspot for flood water accumulation. Wishing to see more, I took the opportunity to head south on Bacon—more rushing water.

I observed water overflowing the curbs on this block of Bacon, impeded by Raglan’s street seats (which were also being overtaken by the flood). Raglan’s outdoor seat structure in the gutter, a clear violation of Mayor Todd Gloria’s order for San Diegans to remove anything that would impede the flow of water from the curb, also protrudes far into the street. The totality of it was underwater—fake grass and all. Could this be the reason the intersection of Narragansett and Bacon had a large pool, threatening Poma’s?

I then proceeded to follow the source of the flow down Bacon, east on Del Monte and then back north up Cable. Cable was more of the same. Huge flowing puddles stretching nearly across the street. Every intersection full of flowing water from Narragansett to Lotus. Voltaire, being further out on the flat alluvial plane and further from the slope of the hill that is Point Loma does not feel a great deal of the same pooling effects as the funnel of the rest of OB.

The War Zone is usually spared when it comes to flooding from rain. I concluded my tour of my neighborhood by enjoying the beautiful bone dry traffic circle on West Point Loma and Bacon bound for the La Jolla cell. The storm’s fury waning.

Heading north on the 5 I felt the storm’s fury surge again. Large drops, heavy precipitation. I’m headed directly into the path of cell. Exiting La Jolla Pkwy I saw streaks of weathered sandstone and water crossing the road. My excitement built. Heavy rain increasing.

I was so eager to be in the storms path that I quickly exited La Jolla Scenic Dr N. Heavier rain growing ever more. Now is my time to see the great deluge of water I’ve been looking for all day. I headed west zig zagging through neighborhoods until I found myself on Calle Del Oro. “Street of the Gold?” I thought to myself. More like “Street of the Flood.” As I followed the grade down this long snaking road I was sure that I would find an accumulation of water so large it would be impassible at the bottom. The hydrologic attributes of this street make the perfect recipe for gathering water and funneling it, they would act as tributaries to a river. Houses would surely be under water.

But as I proceeded down the gold street I saw nothing more than a trickle. Each intersection that should have been a tributary was merely a storm drain where water seemed to disappear underground. Halfway down I still held hope that the deluge was imminent. It was pouring rain. I just witnessed a lighter version of this cell submerge a few blocks in OB after all. I reached the bottom without getting my rims on my truck wet. I arrived at La Jolla Shores and saw the most storm water I’d seen since I had arrived in La Jolla, a small trickle, going right into a storm drain and vanishing into the oddly blue La Jolla Shores ocean.

My road trip through two very similar western facing slopes flowing into low lying coastal communities at (or barely above) sea level could be interpreted as an unscientific study in the differences between the two community’s storm drain infrastructures.

As a scientific researcher with some experience in verification studies and evaluating statistical significance, I don’t think it should be considered a study at all. With that being said, I’ve reviewed rainfall totals for the day. Point Loma received 0.64 inches in the last 24 hours at the time of writing this. And although La Jolla doesn’t choose to measure rainfall (it seems that they prefer to just ignore it and pay to make go away as fast as possible) the closest coastal reading I could find was Encinitas which measured 1.26 inches in the last 24 hours. Both measurements were taken from Weather.gov.

From watching the hi resolution reflectivity scans almost all day on my prosumer radar app “Radar Scope” I would estimate La Jolla’s rainfall total to lie somewhere in between Point Loma and Encinitas—which would make sense as La Jolla lies somewhere in between Point Loma and Encinitas geographically (read not scientific).

That brings us to the point of this whole thing. Why does La Jolla get to enjoy a miraculous storm drain infrastructure while Ocean Beach gets puddles? Where does their water disappear to? I assume it’s simply gathered under the street and dumped into the ocean, but why is ours so ineffective and inefficient by comparison? And lastly, but perhaps most importantly, how do we get streets of gold—or at least streets that don’t flood every time it sprinkles?