By Steve Gorman<\/p>\n
LOS ANGELES, Dec 24 (Reuters) – Torrential rains drenched Southern California on Wednesday, unleashing widespread flash flooding as authorities urged motorists to \u200bstay off roads and residents living downslope of wildfire-scarred foothills and canyons \u200cto evacuate.<\/p>\n
Downpours measuring an inch (2.54 cm) or more of rain an hour in some areas were \u200cspawned by the region’s latest atmospheric river storm, a vast airborne current of dense moisture siphoned from the Pacific and swept inland over the greater Los Angeles area.<\/p>\n
The Christmas Eve storm was expected to persist into Friday, posing unsafe driving conditions during \u2060what would normally be a \u200cbusy holiday travel period, according to the U.S. National Weather Service.<\/p>\n
“Life-threatening” storm conditions were expected to persist through Christmas Day over \u200dSouthern California, “where widespread flash flooding is underway,” the weather service said.<\/p>\n
A flash-flood warning was posted across much of Los Angeles County until 6 p.m. PST, urging motorists: “Do not attempt to travel \u200bunless you are fleeing an area, subject to flooding or under an \u200cevacuation order.”<\/p>\n
Los Angeles city officials urged residents to heed evacuation orders issued for about 130 homes considered especially vulnerable to mudslides and debris flows in areas where last year’s wildfires ravaged the community of Pacific Palisades.<\/p>\n
Wednesday’s heavy rainfall was accompanied by gusty winds that forecasters said were likely to topple trees and power lines. \u2060In upper elevations of the Sierra mountains, the \u200bstorm was expected to dump heavy snow.<\/p>\n
NWS meteorologist \u200bAriel Cohen said 4 to 8 inches of rain had fallen in some foothill areas by 9 a.m. PST, and the Los \u200dAngeles City News Service \u2060reported numerous rockslides in the mountains. Forecasts called for more than a foot (30.48 cm) of rain falling over some lower-terrain mountain areas by week’s end.<\/p>\n
Forecasters even \u2060issued a rare tornado warning for a small portion of east-central Los Angeles County due to \u200cheavy thunderstorm activity over the community of Alhambra.<\/p>\n
(Reporting by Steve Gorman \u200cin Los Angeles; Editing by Chris Reese)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"By Steve Gorman LOS ANGELES, Dec 24 (Reuters) – Torrential rains drenched Southern California on Wednesday, unleashing widespread…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":368489,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[47],"tags":[180866,192,1024,3031,13489,79,31641,180867,180868],"class_list":{"0":"post-368488","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-environment","8":"tag-christmas-eve-storm","9":"tag-environment","10":"tag-flash-flooding","11":"tag-los-angeles","12":"tag-los-angeles-county","13":"tag-science","14":"tag-southern-california","15":"tag-storm-conditions","16":"tag-torrential-rains"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/368488","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=368488"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/368488\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/368489"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=368488"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=368488"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=368488"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}