Rain and snow finally break SoCal’s relentless dryness that fueled unprecedented fires
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Southern California emerged from weeks of unprecedented fires, winds and smoke Monday to rain-covered streets, puddles on sidewalks and snow-capped mountains as the first storm of the season finally brought some relief from record-dry conditions.
By midmorning Monday, the heaviest rain and snowfall had mostly passed through the Southland, but cleanup and recovery efforts continued after bursts of intense downpours hit the mountains and foothills, including near some recent burn areas.
“There definitely were some issues,” said Ryan Kittell, a National Weather Service meteorologist in Oxnard, citing several road closures because of mudslides and flooding. “Fortunately, I think the heaviest rain in L.A. County happened over the ocean — but it was pretty close.”
Although the much-anticipated rainfall had many fire-weary Angelenos hopeful, forecasters had also been worried that the system would create thunderstorms or strong storm cells that would inundate the regions’ fresh burn scars, wreaking more havoc on the disaster-fatigued region. But luckily, Kittell said, the heaviest rain missed those areas.
“This was a largely beneficial rain. ... I think we dodged a bullet,” he said. “It helped with the firefights and definitely gives us a break from fire weather.”
Flash-flood and mudslide risks for the burn areas had mostly diminished early Monday, forecasters say. Here are some rain totals.
However, the amount of rainfall isn’t quite enough to keep Los Angeles’ fire season from dragging into February. It would take 2 to 4 inches of rain to comfortably consider the wildfire season over, Kittell said. This storm dropped, generally, half an inch to 1.5 inches across the L.A. Basin.
“It’s not quite where we’d be comfortable to say we’d be good for the season, but certainly providing relief for the next couple weeks,” he said.
During Monday morning’s commute, motorists found the 5 Freeway through the Grapevine shut down due to snow. It finally reopened about 11:30 a.m. after it had been blocked off for more than 12 hours. Up to 3 inches of snow hit the Tejon Pass.
Southbound lanes of the 101 Freeway in downtown L.A. were also briefly closed because of flooding, but those lanes were reopened by morning rush hour.
Pacific Coast Highway in Malibu was also closed, along with several other canyon roads, including Topanga Canyon Boulevard, which was clogged by mud and debris. Several inches of sludge swallowed the roadway in some areas, according to images from the California Department of Transportation.
The Santa Monica-Malibu Unified School District closed all four of its Malibu schools Monday because of dangerous road conditions and challenges accessing the schools.
In this section of western Altadena, residents weren’t ordered to evacuate until after 5 a.m., according to records reviewed by The Times. That was well after smoke and flames were threatening the area.
Although the heaviest rain didn’t fall over burn scars, potentially dangerous rain rates — typically considered half an inch or more an hour — did hit some areas. Near the north end of Las Virgenes Road in the Santa Monica Mountains, rain rates hit 0.43 of an inch in an hour Sunday night, quite close to the Palisades fire zone. In southern Santa Barbara County, rain rates topped an inch an hour.
“It was very localized,” Kittell said. “Thankfully, none of it fell over a burn area.”
The heavy downpour in Santa Barbara County occurred Sunday near Goleta, not far from where a once-in-500-years storm cell hit the denuded hills of Montecito in 2018, triggering a mudslide that took out more than 100 homes and killed 23 people. That storm cell hit not long after the Thomas fire, an unusual December wildfire that created back-to-back disasters — a worst case scenario that L.A. officials were hoping to avoid this week.
A debris flow can happen when water rapidly moves downhill and picks up mud, rocks, branches and sometimes massive boulders, capable of crushing cars and homes, and potentially threatening lives. Debris flows are a risk after wildfires because the heat of the fire makes the soil repellent to water, which doesn’t percolate as well into the soil and instead can move objects fast downhill.
After an epic dry streak, the first real rain of winter fell in Southern California, bringing elevated risk of floods and landslides to areas recently burned by wildfires.
But what the Southland saw over the weekend and Monday was much more manageable.
A weather service station at Eaton Dam, near the Eaton fire burn scar, recorded two-tenths of an inch of rain by early Monday. A Monte Nido station — in the Santa Monica Mountains near the Palisades fire burn scar — recorded 1.55 inches.
Rainfall in Los Angeles County peaked in Porter Ranch, with its three-day rain total hitting 1.62 inches as of 10 a.m. Monday, according to the National Weather Service. Sepulveda Canyon wasn’t far behind with 1.45 inches, and Santa Monica Pier got 1.38 inches. Some areas, however, didn’t top half an inch: Agoura Hills and Castaic saw a third of an inch; Alhambra got 0.49 of an inch.
Snowfall in the mountains accumulated to more than a foot in some of the highest elevations, including Mountain High in Wrightwood and at Arrowbear Lake. Other peaks saw 1 to 10 inches: Mt. Wilson recorded 10 inches, Frazier Park got 2 to 4 inches and Mt. Baldy got 5 to 10 inches, according to the National Weather Service.
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