Forecasters say a series of winter storms will drop rain in the Los Angeles area and bring snow to the mountains this week.
The heaviest rainfall is expected Tuesday night through Thursday. The system will be connected to an atmospheric river, a stream of air with a high moisture content that creates a kind of pipeline and pours 2 to 3 inches of rain over a large part of LA County, said Kathy Hoxsie, a meteorologist from the National, said. Weather service in Oxnard.
A weaker round of rain and snow is also forecast to hit Monday morning.
This comes after the first in the series of storms up to a centimeter of rain scattered over the area until Sunday.
Snowfall ranged from dusting along the Vineyards to as much as 2 inches at higher altitudes. In Malibu, residents shared social media images of improvised sledding sessions, which is a rare factor for the coastal area. But what looked like snow was actually small grain hail, Hoxsie said.
This did not prevent some executives from frolicking in foreign whiteness.
Officer Stephan Brandt of the California Highway Patrol said his department received a report shortly after 5 p.m. Saturday of several drivers stopping and parking near the Malibu Canyon tunnel.
“They were playing in the snow,” Brandt said, advising that such activities were “dangerous” and unwise.
The next storm was expected to move to the Central Coast Sunday night and reach the Los Angeles area Monday morning, Hoxsie said.
“It’s going to be a little wetter and a little colder,” she said.
Snow levels are expected to drop to 1,500 feet, with 1 to 3 inches in the Antelope Valley’s foothills and a dusting in the Santa Clarita Valley. Forecasters demanded 2 to 4 inches of snow along mountain passes and up to 8 inches at higher altitudes.
Strong winds are expected along the coast in the provinces of LA and Ventura, with gusts of 40 to 50 km / h, and in the Antelope Valley, with gusts that may be more than 60 km / h.
Forecasters called for large waves, with waves of 8 to 12 feet on beaches that run westward, Monday and Tuesday. “So no one is allowed to be in the water,” Hoxsie said.
During the third storm, which is expected to be even colder and wetter, rainfall can sometimes be high, increasing the possibility of debris flow in recent fire areas, as well as mud and rock boulders on mountain roads. Substantial snow accumulation is possible, mainly over 5000 feet.
A fourth storm system is possible from Saturday.
The pattern change came after a summer with record heat, the worst fire season in California history and a dry fall and early winter when Southern California was raked by Santa Ana winds.
Although the northwestern and northern Intermountain West in the Pacific Ocean has suffered heavy rainfall due to a series of storms in the North Pacific, the central and southern parts of the West are in drought that is about as severe as it can get.
This round of rainfall will probably still not be enough to bring the area to normal levels for the season, Hoxsie said.
“We started so dry that it was not enough,” she said. “If it calms down after these storms, we’ll probably still be in trouble.”
Times author Paul Duginski contributed to this report.