The rainwater from a rare spring storm that pooled on Gilbert Jaffe's front sidewalk could be viewed as a nuisance, but in California's extreme drought conditions, he was treating it like the precious resource it's become.
Jaffe, a retired Boeing engineer, was scooping up buckets of water during brief rains Tuesday night and carrying it into barrels in his backyard near downtown Los Angeles.
"I've been collecting water for a couple of years," Jaffe said. "I use the rainwater for my garden."
He said he'd been watering his tomatoes and peppers for six weeks with rain he collected during a bigger storm in February, and hoped his new take could continue his no-tap-water streak.
The storm that had doused Northern California for the previous
24 hours arrived in Southern California on Tuesday night, bringing mostly light but necessary rainfall across much of the region.
Thousands were without power for several hours because of the storm, and the Los Angeles Dodgers had a rare rain delay on the second day of the season, though there wasn't nearly enough moisture for a rainout.
Amy Jackson, 35, of Los Angeles, a corporate securities paralegal, expressed joy at the storm as she had a cigarette in the lee of a downtown skyscraper.
"We're absolutely thrilled to have rain," she said. "I mean, we're in a really severe drought right now. It's been scary, actually, as to how low our reservoirs have gotten ... so to even have this little bit, it's great."
Not everyone was happy.
"Rain makes me insane," said high school student James Haynes, 16, of Los Angeles, as he sheltered from drizzle outside a hotel while waiting for a ride home. "I've got to take the bus ... and with all that rain and stuff ... that's too much to deal with. I've already got to go to school every day. I've got to deal with the rain too?" If he had his way "it would rain never," he said.
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