Extreme amounts of rain drench Southern California

AccuWeather

Storms are still continuing through the Southwest, but the worst is past in Southern California. Here's a wrap-up of what happened.

Transcript

00:00 About an hour ago, you were dealing with a lot of heavy rainfall and now north to San Diego.

00:05 Reid, what are the impacts you're seeing there now?

00:08 Well, we did have very heavy rain early on today and that triggered numerous flash flood warnings.

00:14 But the good news is that now the sun is out. We just had a double rainbow here at Dana Point.

00:19 And now you have blue sky. I do see some convection further up the California coast, probably up near the Malibu area.

00:26 You can see the tops of those clouds there off to the north.

00:29 But the good news is that the sun is out here at Dana Point.

00:33 Those flash flood warnings have been allowed to expire, but the runoff continues to flow into the Pacific Ocean.

00:39 That's the San Juan Creek area right there.

00:41 And you can see a lot of that runoff coming in from all the Santa Ana Mountains,

00:46 which are the taller mountain range just inland from the coast here in Southern California.

00:50 And you can definitely see that runoff from all the floodwaters.

00:54 And we had about an inch per hour rainfall rates earlier today.

00:57 And about two to four inches over the higher terrain.

01:00 So definitely not as much as we had over the previous couple of days.

01:04 But definitely some very impactful rains again here for Southern California.

01:07 And how have people responded to that?

01:11 Have you seen a lot of people out and about or crews out and about trying to work to kind of mitigate the damage?

01:16 Certainly a lot of crews are out today, especially across the Los Angeles Metro,

01:23 up in the Santa Monica Mountains where we had over a foot of rainfall out there.

01:27 You definitely saw a lot of crews that were cleaning up some of those mudslides and landslides

01:31 that impacted the steeper terrain up above the Beverly Hills area.

01:35 And out here you see a lot of sandbags as well.

01:38 So there was a lot of preparation underway here in California ahead of this Atmospheric River event.

01:44 But 12.63 inches in that 24-hour period is a very substantial amount there at UCLA.

01:51 Just incredible rainfall totals that fell over the last 48 to 72 hours.

01:56 All right, Reid, thank you so much for that update.

01:59 Again, as we follow this story with that intense rainfall that we've been dealing with in Southern California.

02:05 And let me just tell you that the numbers are very striking too.

02:08 As we open up the big board, we've got that on our list.

02:11 I mean, just look at some of these areas here.

02:13 Populated places like Bel Air, where we do have a lot of communities intertwined among the mountains.

02:19 And then off towards the south side, we have a lot of the golf course with many homes around it.

02:24 15 plus inches of rainfall.

02:27 That's what we're talking about as these Southern California mountains squeezed it out.

02:31 Next door to the east, Beverly Glen here, also dealing with some substantial rainfall too.

02:36 So no surprise that some of these numbers here are very, very high.

02:40 And when this comes down in a matter of three days, you're talking about five inches on average a day.

02:46 It is really just too much to handle.

02:48 The storm system is trying to push its way out.

02:52 And we will have some of that moisture pulling its way on through to the, as it works its way off towards east.

02:59 Meanwhile, here, let's take in on the storm reports, because we do have several of them.

03:04 We've had a lot of funnel clouds talked about in north into the Central Valley there of Southern California.

03:10 So we are dealing with some of those reports still coming in at this point in time.

03:13 Meanwhile, the flooding reports are still a problem too.

03:16 San Diego River is at 10.2 feet.

03:19 So that's going to be a concern as we hit that flood report, that flood stage.

03:23 And there's more concern with some of that rain that's still coming down as we go into the evening hours.

03:29 Elsewhere though, again, we are trying to see things quiet down.

03:32 Let's talk about it though, that flooding risk mostly confined to Southern California.

03:36 That's been the greatest risk that we've had over the past couple of hours.

03:39 And that's going to wind down as we head into tomorrow morning.

03:42 So tomorrow, our story is the storms moving out.

03:46 It's moving off towards east.

03:47 And while it does so, it's going to have some wind.

03:50 It's going to have some higher elevation snow.

03:52 And beyond that, there's a little wave pushing into California.

03:56 So San Francisco, you still have some wet weather for you.

03:58 Los Angeles, showers for you.

04:00 Phoenix, we're also looking at showers.

04:02 The core of this storm system as it pushes across the four corners will produce some more intense snows towards the Wasatch.

04:09 And even as you work your way farther east into Colorado, we do have some of that snow for some of the ski resorts.

04:14 Flagstaff, it is looking like it's going to be a one to two foot snowfall for you.

04:19 So congratulations if you're a snow lover there as we look at the AccuWeather wintercast,

04:23 which you can find anytime on AccuWeather.com or on the AccuWeather app.

04:28 Of course, as this storm system continues to pull out, there's a little bit more energy that dives through on Thursday.

04:33 And then that's departing across the southwest.

04:36 So we watch this with time.

04:37 The next few hours, still getting a lot of that moisture, still getting some of those mountain snows.

04:41 If you watch into California, San Francisco, you get a secondary short wave.

04:45 So there's a bit of energy here, just a small piece, nothing like the big storm pushing into California.

04:50 But that produces even more rain for some and more mountain snow.

04:54 A couple more inches at some of these passes.

04:57 We're looking at four to eight at Donner Pass.

04:59 Just from that little impulse of energy there pushing its way on in through Wednesday into Thursday,

05:04 Mammoth Mountain can expect another two to four inches.

05:07 But the worst of it wrapping up as we head into tomorrow, and that has been through Southern California,

05:12 where we have seen that extensive rainfall that has led to the risk for deadly flooding.

05:18 So the big concerns there.

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