After Southern California got pummeled by storms in early February, the second half of the month is about to bring even more heavy rain.
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00:00 Those clouds are the precursor to the storms.
00:03 We've been warning you about this since last week and everything unfortunately is running
00:08 right on time with these storms.
00:10 With that I want to bring in now our AccuWeather California expert Ken Clark.
00:14 You know Ken, it was interesting.
00:17 Back early before the winter started we were talking about that, you know Ken, it's been
00:24 a dry start but you correctly pointed out that a lot of times during El Nino years the
00:29 wet winter starts a little late but then it just comes on and on and on and that's exactly
00:36 what has happened.
00:37 Yeah, that's what's happened.
00:39 We had a very, very slow start.
00:41 October, November, December saw much lower amounts of precipitation than is normal but
00:46 once we hit January the storm started and now they're not ending.
00:50 No they're not.
00:51 You know Ken, let's take a look at the future rainfall here.
00:55 It just kind of gives you an event, kind of an idea of what we're looking at and you know
00:59 it looks like a widespread rain event and you warned earlier in the week when we looked
01:05 at this map that you thought, you know, in the end I bet you Southern California gets
01:09 more than what is shown and the modeling so far has gone right in step with your thoughts.
01:15 Yeah, this is coming in waves.
01:18 There's really about three waves I've seen on this, maybe even a fourth one if you count
01:22 the upper level trough moving through on Wednesday.
01:25 So we're going to see episodes of rain.
01:27 Most of the rain that will fall in the way of amounts of rain in Southern California
01:32 is not going to be until Monday afternoon into Wednesday.
01:35 Some lighter rain may get down there for a time Saturday into Sunday, especially around
01:39 the LA area.
01:40 San Diego, it may wait until maybe sometime Tuesday into Wednesday for the real rains
01:46 to get down into that area.
01:48 Now Ken, what's interesting about this pattern, it's two storms but these storms are going
01:53 to be slow moving and they're actually going to come out in pieces and I think case in
01:57 point, let's take a look at the Saturday Sunday storm and you could already see that where
02:02 we have that highlight, that's where the upper low is.
02:05 But east of there, look at the moisture and already a developing atmospheric river on
02:11 the eastern end, Ken.
02:13 And the slower these storms are, the more we get involved with subtropical flow and
02:18 I think that's what we're going to see here.
02:20 We're going to see more and more subtropical flow get captured with these storms as time
02:24 goes on so that when the second to last piece comes in, that's where we're going to see
02:29 probably the heaviest rain.
02:31 And the LA area, they got walloped last week.
02:35 They're going to get a pretty healthy dose of rainfall, especially in the south facing
02:38 mountains again.
02:39 It won't be as bad as last week, but I would expect six, seven, maybe eight inches of rain
02:45 in some of those south facing mountains before it's all said and done.
02:48 Eoni, you were talking about, look how slow the rain is, Ken.
02:50 Let's take a look at future radar and you can see it's offshore by midnight.
02:55 But Ken, it looks like then for tomorrow, let's talk about tomorrow first around one.
03:01 It's mostly central and northern California.
03:03 We're going to have some problems with this.
03:06 We are.
03:07 That's when we're going to start to expect again some renewed flooding problems.
03:10 It will wait until probably Saturday afternoon and Saturday night into Sunday.
03:14 But there's going to be some heavy rain across central and northern California during that
03:18 time with that round of rain coming in.
03:20 And you know, today, no problems if you're doing any traveling, as we've been talking
03:23 about today is not the problem.
03:26 Temperatures in the 60s.
03:27 But, you know, Ken, let's talk about the initial round.
03:30 So the first round goes through a little break, let's say late Saturday night, Sunday morning.
03:36 Here's the next round.
03:38 That's right.
03:39 And that comes in and that's going to have some moderate to heavy rain again across central
03:42 and northern California.
03:43 Some lighter rain amounts down in the L.A. area.
03:46 As you can see there, San Diego looks to be dry again on Sunday and probably even Monday.
03:51 So live in San Diego.
03:53 Don't expect most of the storms until early next week.
03:57 With the upper low staying offshore, though, Ken, there we are at Monday, 11 o'clock.
04:02 This is where southern California has the danger.
04:06 That's right.
04:07 Monday afternoon through Tuesday, the heaviest rain will fall and we could see thunderstorms
04:12 really anywhere with these systems as they move through as well.
04:16 So renewed flooding is likely across a good portion of California because of all the rain
04:22 that fell a week ago.
04:24 Really quickly, Ken, before we let you go in about 15, 20 seconds, Sierra snow.
04:29 We've been running well below normal.
04:31 We're going to we've caught up a lot.
04:33 We're going to catch up again.
04:34 Oh, we're going to catch up again big time.
04:37 You know, three to six inches of snow, three to six feet of snow is likely, maybe as much
04:43 as eight in some of those resort areas.
04:45 Again, this is traveling to the Sierra come this weekend and early next week.
04:51 It's going to be very, very rough.
04:53 California expert Ken Clark.
04:54 Nobody knows better.
04:56 California better than Ken.
04:57 Not even you.
04:58 Thank you, Christine.
04:59 I appreciate that.
05:00 Ken, have a good weekend.
05:01 Stay safe.
05:01 a good weekend. Stay safe.