OT - any of you ever have mud rain on your car??

[SPURSX3]

we had rain mixed with dust and dirt from mexico yesterday, so when I got to my car yesterday it looked like someone dump muddy water all over it..all the cars in my work parking lot look like that today as well.  never seen anything like it.  Do you cali people have this happen to you with smog?  Do you even have the same smog problems still? 

[westkoast]

Smog is still a problem but not as bad as I remember it being when I was younger.  They use to lock us inside the building at school if the air quality hit red (we had air quality colors like terror limits in the 90s).  Now I don't think they do that.  Or at least haven't seen them talk about it on the news at all really.

Ive never had mud get onto my car but for some mf'in reason right after it rains the trash truck shows up, kicks up a bunch of dust/dirt, and it all lands on my car.

[Laker Fan]

Back in the '60's and early '70's, you could not see the San Gabriel Mountains (mountains are really really tall hills for you Texas folks), you could throw a rock and hit them becasue they were my back yard but you couldn't see them for the smog.

In the mid '80's I remember once driving to San Pedro on the Long Beach freeway to catch a day fishing boat to Catalina, it was raing and the pollution in the air was so bad it was coming down with the rain clogging my wipers and leaving heavy, black tar-like smears on my windshield.

[SPURSX3]

Back in the '60's and early '70's, you could not see the San Gabriel Mountains (mountains are really really tall hills for you Texas folks), you could throw a rock and hit them becasue they were my back yard but you couldn't see them for the smog.

In the mid '80's I remember once driving to San Pedro on the Long Beach freeway to catch a day fishing boat to Catalina, it was raing and the pollution in the air was so bad it was coming down with the rain clogging my wipers and leaving heavy, black tar-like smears on my windshield.

That was yesterday, the wipers just kept smudging up on me.  The local car washes are making a killing today...

[msc]

Back in the '60's and early '70's, you could not see the San Gabriel Mountains (mountains are really really tall hills for you Texas folks), you could throw a rock and hit them becasue they were my back yard but you couldn't see them for the smog.

In the mid '80's I remember once driving to San Pedro on the Long Beach freeway to catch a day fishing boat to Catalina, it was raing and the pollution in the air was so bad it was coming down with the rain clogging my wipers and leaving heavy, black tar-like smears on my windshield.

I grew up in the 80's in San Gabriel and can attest to the fact that it was much worse back then.  Especially in that part of the southland becasue the winds from the coast push the crud right up against the SG Mountains. 

Like westkoast mentioned we'd have 1st State Smog Alerts at school which meant we weren't allowed to go outside for recess.  Of course I'd go play hoops or skate after school with my friends anyway and my lungs would hurt when I'd take a deep breath in. 

Laker Fan, my Dad grew up in Highland Park in the 50's - 60's and he said they would burn coal for heat/energy back in the day.  The thick, black soot would go straight in to the local atmosphere.  It?s almost unbelievable now, but people just didn?t know back then.

[Laker Fan]

Problem with SoCal MSC is that it is surrounded on 3 sides by mountains and the ocean breezes blow everthing right into the LA basin and trap it up againt the San Gabriel and San Bernardino mountains and that inversion would just hold it there for weeks. Summer was always the worst when I was growing up because in the '60's we didn't know what air quality meant let alone how to control it, and when you're a kid, all you know is you want to go outside and play. My lungs would BURN after a day of playing army in the foothills above Altadena.

[westkoast]

Do you guys know why they stopped with the whole air quality thing?

Also is it me or has the air quality actually improved since the early 90s?  I swear all the bad air was blown right into the IE.

[msc]

Westkoast, it has gotten much better.  I don't think they stopped with it, I think it's the opposite.  Over the years they've implemented more and more environmental regulations (smog checks, no more coal, etc.). 

The air quality here is much better than it was when I was a kid and even moreso from when Laker Fan was growing up.  The problem with SoCal is exactly what Laker Fan said about the inversion layer.  That and there are 20million people here kicking up dust every day. 

[Laker Fan]

Alot of factors "Koast, there are less production factories in LA than there was when I was growing up in the '60's, Uniroyal Tire shut down and its factory is now the Citadel outlets as just one example, and LA and Orange County clamped down very hard on fatories that remained open and were spewing tons of garbage into the basin with almost no regulation prior to the mid-seventies. The oil refieries in the Torrence/Wilmington/El Segundo area have dramatically cut back on pollution.

Ari quality improved as vehicle emissions became more stringent, especially in California, despite there being more cars per capita in LA than anywhere else in the world.

The worst place in the world to drive by IMO is the Farmer John pork rendering plant in Maywood on Vernon and the Kal Kan plant next door to it, I worked in Maywood for about 7 years and when these places were running hot the smell was unbearable for blocks around.

[msc]

^^^I worked at Farmer John for 3 summers in high school/college.  One of my best friends was one of Francis Clougherty's (Farmer John's) grandkids.  That smell is horrible, but you'd get used to it after a couple of days.   

[Laker Fan]

No you don't! I worked around that plant for 7 years just off Bandini (awe, now THERE was another wonderful smell, Bandini Fertilizer!), I got real good at holding my breath for 3 blocks as I passed it. I can't imagine working inside that place MSC, you're a better man than me.

[msc]

Yup, Bandini and Soto Street.  I love the mural of the happy pigs playing in the fields with the kids.  Little do they now ...

It was actaully a great job for me at the time.  They paid $7/hour, which in '91-93ish, was the best money a 17/18 yr old kid like me could earn.  I think min wage was around $4 at the time.  FJ would always hire a few Loyola High kids each summer and since I was in tight with my buddy I got jobs there.  It was brutal work, but I tell you, it was one of the best things that happened to me.  It really made me study my butt off in college!  You definitely get used to the smell, but each summer the first few days was always brutal. 

[WayOutWest]

FYI,

The "Clean Air Act" was killed.  One of the first things Dubya did when he got in office is put coal producers in charge of enforcing the "Clean Air Act", they quickly "postponed" it putting alot of hi-tech alternative fuel companies in Cali out of buisness.  Cali was the leader in that field, now it doesn't really exist.