Atmospheric river recap: California’s rain, snow, and wind

It’s another record-breaking storm for already extremely battered California! The storm that is exiting the state on Wednesday and moving on east left torrential rains and heavy snow that added to extreme amounts already on the ground from recent atmospheric river events.

The flood watches and warnings are expiring, and the last bit of rain will affect southern California through late Wednesday evening. Some of the totals from the most recent storm that affected Tuesday through Wednesday morning California are in and there were 8 rain records smashed in the Los Angeles area on March 14.

Santa Barbara, Oxnard, Camarillo, Los Angeles Airport, Downtown L.A., Santa Maria, Long Beach, and Paso Robles all hit new records for the most daily rainfall records for such a day. Santa Barbara almost doubled the last record established in 1952 of 1.36’’ and received 2.54 inches on March 14. Los Angeles Airport, LAX, got 1.97’’, battering that last record of 0.43 inches from 1982. That’s over 4 times the amount on the previous record!

Local rivers and creeks in Southern California have peaked and we can expect some of them to stay at flood levels through Thursday.

Across central and northern California besides the heavy rain, there were big wind impacts. Peak wind gusts across many areas exceeded 65 mph, with many more cities staying above 45 mph.

The winds were so strong that several trees were downed along with power lines in Highway 1 and a portion of the highway near Carmel has to be closed.

Strong winds also caused a ground stop in San Francisco International Airport on Tuesday afternoon for a short period of time, but cause significant delays in many flights taking off and leaving the city.

A brief break is expected from the rain in California. Once Saturday arrives, a bit of moisture will move over northern California, with another deep moisture surge on Sunday through early next week. We will be monitoring this closely.