Someone should tell the designers of SoFi Stadium that “It never rains in Southern California,” Tony’s! Tony! Tone!, not taken literally. Sadly, that didn’t happen before the college football national championship.
The song is about a man who longs to meet a woman. That woman makes that man so happy that it feels like a rainy day can’t be with her. A good song – it will stick in your head now for the rest of the day – but while Southern California is regularly hit by drought, it’s physically possible for that region to rain. In the two seasons since SoFi Stadium opened to the public, twice inclement weather has caused problems.
Last season, there was a delayed lightning during Los Angeles Charging Week 4 Monday Night Football match against Las Vegas Raiders. Monday night, a downpour in the Los Angeles area didn’t disrupt the game on the field, but it was a big deal for paying customers. Rain hits the lounges, leading to dangerously slippery surfaces that cause people to fall. Some of them require medical attention.
SoFi is designed to be more than simply the most modern sports stadium. Considering it took 40 years of controversy, litigation and relocation to finally build a new football stadium in Los Angeles, the finished product needed to leave an indelible architectural mark. .
Designers set out to create the greatest sports entertainment complex the world has ever seen. When undertaking such a project, it is best to start from the natural advantages. And in California, the advantage starts with the sun.
There will be more days than there are without, and with the low humidity in SoCal, why not leave as much weather in the facility as possible? One way the designers decided to take advantage of natural light was to make SoFi the world’s first indoor/outdoor stadium.
The roof covers the entire top of the stadium and the upper part of the pitch is translucent. In addition, there is outdoor space a few levels away from both end areas. This allows more natural light, as well as Santa Ana winds, to blow inside.
“This building has no walls so when you look around, the sunlight comes in, it’s basically a 22-acre covered courtyard,” Los Angeles Rams CEO Kevin Demoff told Fox 11 LA in 2019.
It sounds lovely, but no one spends three hours on a covered porch when it rains and winds gusts of more than 30 miles per hour.
Occasionally, California has atmospheric rivers. They are water vapors as long as a river and can hold the same amount of water (sometimes more), which is then discharged wherever the system settles. Think of them as nature’s way of making up for the many months in which the Pacific coast can be without rain.
California doesn’t get them every year, and it’s been a while since a big one – the most recent was in the winter of 2019. In February alone, California was inundated. 18 trillion gallons rain for only 19 days. There were also some bad storms in 2017.
According to the Los Angeles Times, Los Angeles International Airport – just a few miles from the stadium – received more than twice the average rainfall from November 2016 – February 2017. Those storms were so bad that construction of the SoFi Stadium was delayed and could not open until next year. That’s why Chargers got to play one more season at the 27,000-seat Stubhub Center.
Giant storms are only two winters apart. Some might take it as a sign that a “covered courtyard” design might not be the best for a building with tens of thousands of people in it during the months when it is most likely to rain.
Apparently, the designers of the SoFi stadium didn’t notice, and they went on to build a truly one-of-a-kind facility. It was a sight to behold, the glistening silver sheath stretched across most of the premises with a transparent roof over the fields. Then, once inside, a lot of things are built with materials that are so transparent that it allows the sun to do its job.
On an ordinary day, the design perfectly accentuates the beauty of Southern California. It will make one understand what Raphael Saadiq and Timothy Christian Williams were thinking when they wrote “It never rains in Southern California.”
The problem with the songs, though, is that they eventually stop, as does the sunny weather. Getting too caught up in an idea, and ignoring actual early warning signs, can result in visitors sliding around a drenched multi-billion dollar bill. basis.
