Don’t be fooled by the warm weather over the weekend—you’ll need your jacket again soon. Two cold storms are expected to hit Southern California this week, threatening areas that were recently burned.
The first storms will hit the Southland on Monday night. The National Weather Service says there is a 70% chance of light rain on Tuesday and places with gusty winds south of Point Conception.
Then, early Wednesday, a strong atmospheric river is due to arrive. It will bring heavy rain along the coast through Thursday, and as it moves east through the week, it will have big effects on the mountains.
Robin Munroe, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Oxnard, said, “It’s not likely that any area will be safe from the moderate to heavy rain.” “We’ll probably have some convective or heavier showers that could be a little more isolated and only hit certain areas.”
The weather service said it could rain between 1 and 2 inches in the valleys and between 2 and 4 inches in the higher mountains. They said they would send out a flood watch alert from Wednesday at 6 p.m. to Thursday at 6 p.m.
Heavy rain and thunderstorms could hit the southwest-facing slopes and mountains, which are used to these kinds of storms. But Munroe said, “Everyone is going to get a piece of this” storm.
In the foothills and mountains, roads could become flooded, and near burn scars, flash floods, debris flows, and mudslides could happen.
The county government says they are ready.
If it rains, Mark Pestrella, director of Los Angeles County Public Works and top engineer of the Los Angeles County Flood Control District, says, “We’re feeling good about the amount of debris we’ve taken and our ability to catch debris flows.”
Pestrella said that the department is also talking to the sheriff’s office and the fire department about possible evacuations in places where the county doesn’t have debris basins to catch what runs off the hillsides. Pestrella said that the rains expected on Wednesday night are especially scary, so the county has talked to people in Pacific Palisades, Altadena, and Malibu who are vulnerable about what to do.
What will happen in Southern California’s coastal, valley, and mountain places because of the atmospheric river?
