This has been a meager year for the storms once called the Pineapple Express but which now go by the less-fun but more scientific “atmospheric rivers.” (“Pineapple” came from the idea they originated from around Hawaii, whereas they often don’t.)

The general discombobulation of the weather has sent these soggy monsters slamming into our California cousins this winter, whose weather smugness has taken quite a beating in recent years. We, meanwhile, have been shivering in an extra layer or two of jackets when we should already be luxuriating in rhododendron blossoms. (From the mid-1980s to 2004, my predecessor as Observer publisher, Wayne O’Neil — an optimistic and cheerful whistling guy — used to help lead the Ragtime Rhodie Dixieland Jazz Festival in mid-April. By then, the peninsula was overrun with flamboyant flowers and New Orleans rhythms.) This spring, the rhodies must wonder if they woke up too soon.

This weekend’s atmospheric river wasn’t impressive compared to many, but nevertheless made for disappointment for some Easter egg hunters. Visitors here to partake in Long Beach’s Razor Clam Festival were reacquainted with just what an adventure coming to the coast can entail. I was reminded of my first Pineapple Express here 30 years ago. I wrote this about it:

Stupidly, I drove an old Landcruiser rust bucket down to North Head. The lichen-encrusted forest lining the trail out to the lighthouse smashed together and gyrated like witches dancing on an electrified floor. Standing on the crest of the cliff, only the chain-link fence kept me from being thrown over the edge as a gale tore tattered flags of foam from the sea, spinning them hundreds of feet into the sky. I inhaled a newborn atmosphere conceived by the ocean and the storm, virgin oxygen never before held in human lungs. Driving back into town, power lines hung low over the roadway as if stretched and exhausted. “Aw,” I thought, “this is why people don’t flock here.”

Of course nowadays people do flock here in all kinds of weather, maybe at least a little because we at the Observer have told the world what a magical place it is — and rarely more so than during a mighty North Pacific storm when everything spins into a fine fever pitch of howling life.

Thank you for sharing the adventure with us. We appreciate your support.