If your home is in the mandatory evacuation area, which looks to me like more than half of the Carpinteria Valley and most of Montecito, I’m sorry. It has to be terribly stressful to have to pack up and leave your home. Those of us who are not in the red zone will be looking forward to your return. But I have to say this: we who stay behind are not necessarily the lucky ones. Less threatened? Possibly. But we will be riding out a storm like we have never seen in our lifetimes.

The last pineapple express of this magnitude, to my mind, was in the mid-1990s. Some of you can remember the exact year, the Arroyo Paredon flooded the northbound 101 at Padaro and mud covered the freeway south at La Conchita. And that was with healthy hillsides covered with plants and trees.

Don’t let anyone tell you it’s like 1969 either. The Coyote Fire was 5 years earlier and there were no big debris flows in ’69. Just a lot of rain and brushy, unprepared creeks. That’s why they built the flood channels through Carpinteria; to handle water, not debris. I was only 8 but my parents tell me no one at the time mentioned that fire having any relationship to the flood.

So this is unique – historic – to have fire and epic storm so close in time. Am I being dramatic? I guess we’ll know when the sun comes up on Friday.

Stay or go, this is really going to suck. But I have faith we will survive. Pray for us who stay in the ship, and we’ll pray for you in the lifeboats. Godspeed.