Intense California storm swamps roads and forces evacuations

REUTERS/JILL CONNELLY

Cars drive through puddles as heavy rain falls due to an atmospheric river, in an intersection in the Woodland Hills area of Los Angeles, Calif., today.

An intense winter storm drenched Southern California today, triggering flash floods and debris flows that closed roadways and forced residents to evacuate in parts of the Los Angeles region.

The storm, part of a weather system that could bring record rainfall over the holidays, has raised concern among officials about mudslides and even worse flooding, particularly in places where the ground is still scarred from wildfires in January.

“We have had a number of major storms this year, and I ask all Angelenos to take this one seriously during this holiday week,” Mayor Karen Bass of Los Angeles said at a news conference Tuesday.

By midmorning today, rushing debris flows shut down Highway 2 in San Bernardino County, east of Los Angeles, and fire crews there were evacuating homes. Battered by heavy surf, Ventura County’s most famous fishing spot, the Ventura pier, closed and will not reopen before the weekend. Firefighters rescued a man who had been trapped in a drainage tunnel by the Los Angeles River, lowering a ladder so that he could climb out.

Bass and other officials have been repeating the same warning to residents: Stay off the roads if you can.

The National Weather Service issued brief tornado warnings in several cities in Los Angeles County, including Pasadena and East Los Angeles. By midday, Gov. Gavin Newsom had declared a state of emergency in six counties, including Los Angeles, Orange and San Diego.

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In Wrightwood, a ski resort town of nearly 5,000 people in the San Bernardino Mountains northeast of Los Angeles, the rain and debris flows overwhelmed some roadways. The entire town was under an evacuation warning.

“This is the worst flooding I’ve seen,” said Sarah Bailey, 33, who has lived in the area for more than two decades.

Bailey, who runs vacation rental cabins, has been fielding calls all morning from customers canceling their reservations because of the floods, she said. Some of the renters who were already there were unable to evacuate because of closed roads.

“It’s an economic nightmare because Christmas and New Year’s are the biggest two weeks for Wrightwood,” Bailey said. “That’s where the majority of people in this town make their money.”

A Red Cross spokesperson said the agency had opened four shelters in the Los Angeles region on Tuesday evening. But so far, only a handful of people had taken shelter at them.

Flash flood warnings — issued when floods are imminent or already happening — were in effect for several cities in Los Angeles County, including San Fernando, Altadena and Santa Clarita, and for parts of Santa Barbara and Ventura counties, west of Los Angeles.

The relentless rains are coming from a series of atmospheric rivers, or large plumes of moisture in the sky, that have been flowing over California. Climate change is also a factor: Heavy rains and flooding are becoming more common because of global warming.

The weather service took the rare step of issuing a “high risk” alert for excessive rainfall for Los Angeles and areas to the north. Over the last decade, some of the nation’s deadliest and most destructive floods have occurred under this specific warning level.

“This is the type of storm system that affects the area approximately every five to 10 years or so,” Ariel Cohen, a meteorologist with the weather service, said at the Tuesday news conference. “There will almost certainly be numerous rockslides and mudslides, along with areas of severe flooding, in urban locations and along freeways, which is why being out on the road will be exceptionally dangerous.”

Because of the high risk of mud and debris flows, mandatory evacuation orders were in place for parts of Orange County that were burned in the Airport fire in fall 2024, as well as for a recreational vehicle resort in Ventura County and places scarred by this year’s wildfires in Los Angeles County, including the Pacific Palisades.

The holiday presents its own challenge. According to the Los Angeles Police Department, many residents have resisted orders to evacuate during Christmas.

Jim McDonnell, the chief of the Los Angeles police, said Tuesday that officers had visited 126 properties within the Palisades burn zone to share evacuation information.

“Many of the people — probably most of the people — in the evacuation area have thanked us for the notification but chosen not to leave,” McDonnell said. “I would ask you to seriously reconsider that.”

The rain now falling in Los Angeles is the first of what forecasters said would be two main waves of downpour.

The first was expected to turn into light showers by late afternoon today, said Joe Sirard, a meteorologist with the weather service. But the precipitation would probably intensify again Thursday night, he added, bringing a couple more inches.

The storm is part of a broader system that has already soaked northern and central California since the weekend and is set to dump snow across the Sierra Nevada.

There has been at least one fatality in northern California attributed to the storm: A 74-year-old man died Sunday after he drove his pickup truck onto a flooded roadway in Redding, according to the police there.

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.

© 2025 The New York Times Company

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