‘Firehose’ of Flooding Rains Bring Landslide Risk to Hollywood

The Hollywood Hills and Santa Monica Mountains face life-threatening landslides and flash flooding on Monday as an intense atmospheric river blankets Southern California.

“We have an atmospheric firehose pointed right at Southern California,” said Ryan Truchelut, president of commercial forecaster WeatherTiger LLC. “Today is really the key day,”

Parts of Southern California are facing a “high risk of excessive rainfall,” a prediction the National Weather Service uses sparingly across the US, according to Truchelut. An “extremely dangerous situation” is unfolding in those areas, according to a Monday post from the agency on X.

“What we’ve seen in the past is destruction of roadways and people getting caught in cars and not able to get to a safe environment,” he said. “Historically, that’s what’s caused the casualties we’ve seen in flash flooding.”

California’s Coast to Be Battered by High Winds, Heavy Rain

A woman walks through floodwater during a storm in Santa Barbara, California on Feb. 4.

The Los Angeles Basin is bracing for further excessive rainfall Monday, according to the weather service’s Weather Prediction Center. That would worsen ground conditions in an area already hammered by the storm, which began over the weekend. The center forecasts an additional 5 and 8 inches (13 to 20 centimeters) of rain, meaning some communities could be facing as much as 14 inches total.

Flooding in that part of the state is especially dangerous because much of the ground is impermeable, so water runs off almost immediately instead of soaking into the ground, which quickly leads to flash floods, Truchelut said.

The likelihood of further flooding comes after Governor Gavin Newsom on Sunday declared a state of emergency in eight counties. As of 9:50 a.m. in New York, more than 530,000 customers lacked power in California, according to PowerOutage.us.

All schools in the Santa Barbara Unified School District were ordered closed Monday “due to a severe storm.” Los Angeles schools will remain open, except at least one located in the Sun Valley area, which is under an evacuation order because of recent fires.

The worst of the rain and flash floods should be over by Tuesday morning, Truchelut said.

Top photo: A man looks at floodwater during a storm in Santa Barbara, California on Feb. 4.