Another round of storms on the way for California
Heavy rain will be returning to California the weekend after Valentine's Day, hitting central California especially hard this time.
Category
🗞
NewsTranscript
00:00 We'll take you from the mountains to Hermosa Beach, California. Bernie, I'll send it off to you.
00:03 Yeah, no problems right now. Pretty quiet. Temperatures in the middle 50s.
00:07 But as we talked about, we have more storms on the way here. And with that, I want to bring in
00:13 right now AccuWeather California expert to Ken Clark. And, you know, Ken, you see this in
00:17 California. When it turns wet, you get these rounds. Then you get a break. And then we have
00:24 the next round. Of course, we had the deadly round of rain early in this month. And then here we go
00:30 again as we head into the weekend. But this round, it's going to be a little different than the
00:36 deadly round of rains we had earlier in the month. I don't think that we're going to see quite the
00:42 rain and snow amounts we saw with the last storm, especially in Southern California.
00:45 The first two storms really are going to be mainly aimed at Central and Northern California.
00:52 And Southern California might wait until Monday and Tuesday to get into the really good rains.
00:57 But this is going to be another series of storms that are going to produce quite a bit of problems.
01:03 We expect renewed flooding. We expect renewed mudslides and landslides. And Sierra is going to
01:09 see feet of snow again. It's going to be impossible by Sunday, Monday to travel into the Sierra above
01:16 6,500, 7,000 feet. Let's take a look at the radar or I should say the satellite. You can kind of
01:22 see, listen, there's a lot of moisture with these storms, but at least right now there doesn't
01:27 appear to be a lot of tropical air into these systems, at least yet, although that certainly
01:33 could change a little bit early next week. The details of these storms are a little bit
01:38 uncertain here this far out. We're not sure when the heaviest rains occur in especially Southern
01:44 California, like I said. And if the storm stalls off the coast, like some of our models are saying,
01:50 then that could allow for a tap of subtropical moisture to come up. So we aren't really aiming
01:56 at the details right now, but the overall aspect of this whole series of storms is we're going to
02:03 see problems once more appearing across California and some serious problems. Let's break it up, Ken.
02:09 It does appear as though here's what we do know. The first round begins maybe as early as late
02:15 Friday night, but it's mostly into the weekend. And listen, there's going to be rain in Central
02:20 California, but it does look as though that the heaviest is going to be aimed in the northern
02:24 part of the state. What can they expect? Heavy periods of rain from just south of the Bay Area
02:31 on northward, heavy snow in the Sierra, especially north of I-80. We're looking at maybe up to
02:39 a half inch to an inch an hour at times from this first band that's coming in as we get into Saturday
02:46 and Sunday. Now, then everything, and you talked about this, this is where it gets a little tricky
02:50 for Southern California because the whole upper level lower trough starts to come south. And
02:55 there looks like there's a window, Ken, and this is where you're a little concerned, that if this
02:59 upper level low stalls, there's a window where all of a sudden you can get a longer period of this
03:06 southwest fetch of moisture coming into California. That's right, and that's when I'm really concerned
03:13 about Southern California, especially the south-facing mountains again. They got a lot of
03:17 rain last time. We saw over a foot of rain in some of those places. I don't think we're going to see
03:22 a foot of rain this time unless something really stalls out, but I think we're going to could see
03:26 as much as three to six inches of rain in those south-facing mountains across L.A. County into
03:32 San Bernardino County, up across Ventura as well. I'm not trying to leave out Central California. I
03:38 think we're going to see major problems there in all those, you know, we could see three to six,
03:43 four to eight inches in the central coastal mountains up into the mountains north of the
03:47 Bay Area from these series of storms. And of course, here's the problem, Ken, and listen,
03:52 this is, when you take a look at this, Ken, this is where you were talking about. Listen,
03:56 they're getting the rain in Southern California. Now, this is a guide. It's not exactly, you know,
04:02 but it gives you the idea that it looks like it's Central and Northern California this time.
04:06 Yeah, the worst, I think, of the weather is going to be probably Central and Northern California.
04:12 Southern California might be even divided into two. L.A. Basin,
04:16 they're going to be a lot different than San Diego.
04:18 Really quickly, Ken, the flood aspect of this, the ground is just so saturated. Here's the
04:23 30-day rainfall. You can see how wet it's been. What's your concern about the flooding? Is it,
04:28 could it be numerous? Is it widespread? Or is it more going to be localized?
04:33 I think it's going to be fairly widespread. There's no room for any of the rain to really
04:39 soak into the ground. So we're probably looking at a very fast runoff and a very
04:44 quick rise in any streams, flood channels, et cetera.
04:49 All right. AccuWeather California expert Ken Clark. No one knows California better than Ken,
04:54 not even me. And Ken, we're going to keep an eye on it with you here over the coming days.
05:00 All right. Thanks, Ken.
05:01 And that's what makes the AccuWeather Network different than other networks.
05:06 We have the experts, including Ken Clark.