Southern California has been battered by a large and dangerous storm system that left record rainfall on Sunday and continued its push on Monday.
The slow-moving atmospheric river parked itself over the Los Angeles metropolitan area late Sunday afternoon, jump-starting what the National Weather Service called “one of the most dramatic weather days in recent memory.”
Gov. Gavin Newsom declared a state of emergency in eight SoCal counties: Los Angeles, Orange, Riverside, San Bernardino, San Diego, San Luis Obispo, Santa Barbara and Ventura.
By Monday, the storm was straddling L.A. and Orange counties, where an “extremely dangerous situation” was unfolding including rushing rivers, downed trees, flooded streets and power outages, as well as landslides in the Hollywood Hills and Santa Monica Mountains.
The storm packed a wallop across California, including flooding, water rescues and damaging winds in the San Francisco Bay Area and down the Central Coast. More than half a million people remained without power statewide Monday morning.
“There’s still a lot of rain to come,” said Ryan Kittell, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service. “There’s a lot of rain left.”
Rainfall topped 10 inches in some areas of L.A. County in two days, easily surpassing the average amount recorded for the entire month of February, according to the National Weather Service.
As of 8 a.m. Monday, downtown L.A. had recorded 5.62 inches of rain over the previous 24 hours. The February average is 3.80 inches.
Here’s our latest coverage:
