This wasn’t just a wet Christmas, it was the wettest Christmas for Southern California.
This Christmas Eve and Christmas Day were the rainiest in the modern record for Southern California, according to the National Weather Service office in Oxnard. And more rain is on the way. A flood watch was forecast to remain in effect for much of the state through at least Friday afternoon, with rain expected throughout the day. Skies should clear up by the weekend.
This is also one of the wettest starts to the water year, which began Oct. 1. Through midday Christmas it ranked in the 10 wettest for Southern California — a complete opposite from last year, when a record dry start to the water year preceded devastating wildfires in Altadena and Pacific Palisades.
Last year was remarkably dry and hot. The summer and fall of 2024 were some of the hottest months in coastal Southern California since at least 1895.
Around the globe people are seeing more dramatic swings between dry-to-wet and wet-to-dry weather whiplash. Scientists say more such episodes of “hydroclimate whiplash” are anticipated worldwide because of human-caused global warming.
Between Wednesday through noon Thursday, Santa Barbara Airport got 4.83 inches of rain, beating the Dec. 24-25 record last hit in 1955, when 3.22 inches fell. The rain forced Santa Barbara Airport to close twice on Christmas Day — early in the morning and again in the late afternoon. The airfield can flood in heavy rain, forcing commercial flights to be grounded.
Woodland Hills got 4.62 inches of rain, beating the record of 3.34 inches set in 1971; Oxnard, 4.26 inches, beating the record of 2 inches in 1979; Van Nuys, 4.12 inches, beating the record of 1.16 inches set in 2019; Burbank, 3.5 inches, beating the record of 3.1 inches in 1971; Camarillo, 3.36 inches, beating the record of 2 inches in 1979; and UCLA, 3.05 inches, beating the record of 3.02 inches set in 1971.
Downtown L.A. so far has recorded 2.59 inches since Christmas Eve, which is the fourth wettest such period on record. The record for Dec. 24 and 25 is 3.82 inches in 1889.
The last day a Christmas Eve-Christmas Day period was wetter was back in 1971, when 3.24 inches fell over the two day period.
“There is a good chance the rain total could go up through midnight tonight and possibly change this ranking,” the weather service said Thursday afternoon.
Rainfall totals were much higher in the mountains. For the 48-hour period ending 9 a.m. Thursday, nearly 12 inches of rain fell on Ortega Hill in Ventura County. And more than 10 inches of rain fell in parts of the San Gabriel Mountains in Los Angeles County.
One last pulse of rain was expected to work its way through the Central Coast starting Thursday evening and exit L.A. County on Friday, with showers tapering off late in the evening. Los Angeles County could see 1 to 1.5 inches of rain to the coast and valleys — perhaps more in certain spots — and around 4 inches in the mountains.
“The flooding threat will be exacerbated … Friday due to the super saturation of all of the area. Any rainfall that occurs will immediately turn to runoff,” the weather service office in Oxnard said.
Evacuation orders remained in place for dozens of homes in the Riverwood neighborhood of Sunland. The neighborhood could be at risk due to a partial release of water from the Tujunga Dam by the L.A. County Department of Public Works, city officials said, which is intended to prevent potential flooding in the surrounding area. “This is a standard process that has been conducted in the past,” officials said.
Evacuation warnings are in place in recent burn scars in L.A. County, with evacuation orders issued for specific homes at higher risk for mudslides.
Moderate rainfall was expected in the San Bernardino Mountains into Friday morning, moving eastward, “which may be heavy at times in the mountains,” the weather service office in San Diego said.
Rainfall rates are expected to be around half an inch per hour, and “of particular concern is the overly saturated portions of the San Bernardino Mountains and adjacent drainage basins spreading into the Inland Empire and High Desert regions,” the weather service said. An additional 1 to 3 inches of rain is expected in the San Bernardino Mountains.
It’s possible 2 to 3 inches of snow will fall around an elevation of 7,000 feet in the San Bernardino Mountains, with 8 to 12 inches near the mountain peaks.
Elsewhere in Orange County, San Diego County and parts of the Inland Empire, light showers remain possible through Friday evening, eventually tapering off by Saturday morning, the San Diego office said.
About 1 to 1.5 inches of additional rain is expected for Orange County and parts of the Inland Empire next to the San Bernardino Mountains. About 0.25 to 0.75 inches of rain is expected for the San Diego County coast and valleys and the rest of the Inland Empire.
The weather is expected to be drier across California at the start of next week. But there is a chance of a moderate-to-strong Santa Ana wind event in Southern California early next week.
It’s also possible that precipitation could return to Southern California around New Year’s Day, but at the moment the storm appears it would “be a much less intense event” than the Christmas Eve atmospheric river storm, the San Diego office said.
The Christmas holiday storms have caused significant damage across California, and resulted in at least three storm related deaths — a motorist who drove into floodwaters in Redding; a woman who was knocked off a rock by a large wave at a beach in Mendocino County; and a man struck by a falling tree in San Diego.
Two people were killed in a crash involving three vehicles on the Grapevine section of the 5 Freeway Thursday around 3 p.m. Authorities have yet to say what caused the crash.
Gov. Gavin Newsom declared a state of emergency in Los Angeles, San Diego, Orange, Riverside, San Bernardino and Shasta counties, allowing for state resources to mobilize quickly and authorizing Caltrans to seek federal help to repair damaged roads.
Damage was reported across the state, with flooding, landslides and fallen trees also reported in the Central Valley and the San Francisco Bay Area. Tornado warnings were briefly issued for the San Gabriel Valley on Wednesday and parts of San Mateo and Santa Cruz counties on Thursday.
Among the areas hardest hit was Wrightwood, a town of a few thousand people in the San Gabriel Mountains on the border between Los Angeles and San Bernardino counties. A Christmas Eve debris flow — a fast moving flow of mud and rocks — rammed into homes and left cars buried in debris.
There was damage to multiple properties, and there were a number of swiftwater rescues, with nearly 10 inches of rain recorded in the area in a 24-hour period, the weather service said.
People in Lytle Creek, another mountainous community in the San Gabriel Mountains, were trapped after a bridge connecting parts of the town was covered with water and possibly destroyed. Lytle Creek remained under an evacuation warning Thursday, the San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Department said.
Evacuation warnings were in place for Wrightwood and Lytle Creek.
A woman was rescued after she was seen being swept away in San Jose Creek in the San Gabriel Valley — near Fullerton Road by the 60 Freeway, in an area around the City of Industry. She was rescued around where the creek passes Workman Mill Road near the unincorporated community of North Whittier, near the junction of the 605 and 60 freeways.
Major freeways had been shut for hours due to impacts from the storm, including Interstate 15 through the Cajon Pass and Interstate 5 in Sun Valley.
Los Angeles firefighters deployed teams to three river-rescue incidents; one involved the rescue of a man, his dog and his cat who were in a recreational vehicle on an island in the middle of a creek, and were trapped by rising waters. The three were hoisted into a helicopter.
The Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department said it responded to numerous trapped vehicles due to the flooding across the Antelope Valley.
Times staff writers Terry Castleman, Noah Goldberg and Amy Hubbard contributed to this report.
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