Last year, Los Angeles was supposed to be flooded by El Niño. It came and went, and the drought barely noticed. This year, however, we had more rain in two weeks than all of last year combined. At first, I was ecstatic. I missed the rain, especially nice, luod thunderstorms. Then the water started invading our house.

Off the master bedroom is a balcony inset into the mansard roof. It has stucco walls and a stucco ceiling. During rainstorms, water sometimes blows into the balcony and leaves wet spots. However, there is no known rain that blows up and soaks just one spot in the ceiling. Crap.

Ignore the different colors of stucco.

As the rain continued battering Los Angeles, the wet spot on the ceiling grow. Spots appeared in one of the walls, eventually connecting to form a giant blob of doom. The ceiling started dripping water. At this point we were convinced there must be some sort of roof leak. I constantly checked the master bedroom and the living room corners directly under the balcony for signs of moisture. Thankfully, the water seamed happy to stay on the balcony.

We emailed our contractor, who, while surprised, agreed to send out the roofer. The roofer found a leak, but, as of today, still can't fix it until everything finishes drying out.

Our garage is a completely separate structure set into the hill, with a rooftop deck covered in stone tiles. Clearly it felt left out, as it began leaking. First it was just wet cinderblock walls.

You can see some of the old stains on the left.

This was not entirely unexpected due to the waterstains all over the walls. As the rain continued, more water came through, until it was actually dripping down the blocks and pooling on the floor.

Cracks, hopefully from settling, formed between the deck tiles that wrap around to the sides and the wall stucco.

How cool would it be if they looked like the crack from Doctor Who?

Water penetrated the cracks, leading to water stains on the ceiling. By itself, this wasn't the moist worrisome thing ever.

Can you guess where this is going?

See that giant conduit? That's right! One of the leaks is directly above the electrical subpanel! Even better, the water is flowing down behind the particle board emerging where the wall changes to cinder blocks.

Even if the panel is waterproof, that outlet looks kind of skeevy.

Pools formed on the cinder block ledge, eventually overflowing to create nice puddles on the floor. We decided that the boxes of leftover glass tile were of low priority and left them there. Even if the boxes get ruin, the tiles will be fine.

Along the back wall was boxes of leftover hardwood flooring. I used the word "were" because Matt had to move the ridiculously heavy boxes away from the seepage. Hidden behind them, where the plastic wrapped boxes leaned against the wall, was a very odd pattern of water.

The garage has herpes.

We had absolutely no idea what the spots were until things started drying out and the spots turned red. Red? Yes, red. As in red mold. Later today I will call the mold company because it's such a large area and I won't feel comfortable until a professional looks at it.