Mudslides offer preview of what could be a wet winter in Southern California
LOS ANGELES - As heavy rain pelted Hollywood Burbank Airport on Thursday morning, the pilot of Southwest Flight 278 out of Oakland came over the intercom with a warning: The runway was short and wet. It was going to be a bumpy landing.
Paris Organist, a 31-year-old Oakland resident sitting in the front row, put up his foot to brace himself as the plane rolled off the end of the runway just after 9 a.m., its landing gear plowing into a concrete barrier designed to stop airplanes that overshot their mark. Mud splattered on the plane's windows.
"We looked it up on Google Maps, and it showed we were almost to
