Sun, surf and a touch of schadenfreude drew throngs of holiday merrymakers to Los Angeles-area beaches for Christmas, with temperatures touching 80 across Southern California as bitter cold and brutal storms battered most of the country.
"This is the most perfect weather," said Jayanthi Krishna, 47, of Boston, who spent Sunday morning strolling the Santa Monica Pier with her husband and their two teenagers. "At home it's 17 degrees, there's a blizzard. We took pictures (intending to share them) and we thought, 'Is it kind of rubbing it in?'"
Indeed, the weather is superlatively bad almost everywhere outside of California. Ice storms gripped Seattle. Parts of Michigan were buried under more than 3 feet of snow. The "bomb cyclone" menacing much of the continental U.S. this weekend has already stranded thousands of travelers and left tens of thousands more without power. As of Sunday, at least a dozen people have died in Buffalo, N.Y.
