WRIGHTWOOD, Calif. — Heavy rains and strong winds from powerful winter storms this week brought the wettest Christmas season to Southern California in years, triggering widespread mudslides and debris flows and leaving homes halfway filled with mud.<\/p>\n
Rain was expected to ease around Los Angeles Friday afternoon, but there was still a risk of more flash flooding and mudslides, the National Weather Service warned.<\/p>\n
“It’s not going to take a whole lot to create some hazards on the highways,” said Mike Wofford, a National Weather Service meteorologist in Los Angeles. “Still not quite out of the woods, but for the most part, the worst is over.”<\/p>\n
Firefighters rescued over 100 people Thursday in Los Angeles County, with one helicopter pulling 21 people from stranded cars, officials said. LA police also responded to more than 350 traffic collisions, the mayor’s office said.<\/p>\n
Evacuation orders for burn scar areas around the county were extended through Friday morning.<\/p>\n
In Wrightwood, a 5,000-resident mountain town about 80 miles northeast of Los Angeles, the roads turned into rivers, residents said. On Friday, cars were still buried up to their windows in rocks, debris and thick mud.<\/p>\n
Fire officials rescued several people from trapped cars earlier this week when mud and debris cascaded down a road into town. There was one injury reported.<\/p>\n
The system brought the wettest Christmas season to downtown Los Angeles in 54 years, the National Weather Service said. The area recorded 3 inches of rain in three days, while the mountain areas saw up to 12 inches, Wofford said.<\/p>\n
Forecasters expected a dry weekend before more rains were forecast to come next week around New Year’s Eve.<\/p>\n
Waves near the San Francisco Bay Area could reach up to 25 feet Friday, and many parts of northern California remained under a flood watch through Friday.<\/p>\n
More wind and as much as 2 inches of snowfall an hour was expected in the Sierra Nevada, making mountain pass travel treacherous. Avalanche risk around Lake Tahoe on Friday was downgraded, per Sierra Avalanche Center.<\/p>\n
A falling tree killed a San Diego man Wednesday, news outlets reported. Farther north, a Sacramento sheriff’s deputy died in what appeared to be a weather-related crash.<\/p>\n
A 70-year-old woman was killed in Mendocino, California Monday after being swept away by a large wave and a 74-year-old man was killed in Redding, California after being swept away by flood waters Sunday.<\/p>\n
Gov. Gavin Newsom declared emergencies in six counties to allow state assistance.<\/p>\n
The state deployed resources and first responders to several coastal and Southern California counties, and the California National Guard was on standby.<\/p>\n
Associated Press writers Trn Nguyn in Sacramento, California, and Sophie Austin in Oakland, California, and ABC News contributed.<\/p>\n
Copyright \u00a9 2025 by The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"WRIGHTWOOD, Calif. — Heavy rains and strong winds from powerful winter storms this week brought the wettest Christmas…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":109845,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[58947,7,9,8,5028,58946,58945],"class_list":["post-109997","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-california","tag-58947","tag-california","tag-california-headlines","tag-california-news","tag-mudslides","tag-weather-california","tag-wrightwood-california-flooding"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/109997","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=109997"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/109997\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/109845"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=109997"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=109997"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=109997"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}