Light rain began to fall in California Wednesday afternoon as the state braced for the arrival of a major Pacific storm by enacting road closures and issuing evacuation warnings in parts of Los Angeles and Malibu vulnerable to mudslides and debris flows.
“The main show is still tonight,” the National Weather Service in Los Angeles said in a midday forecast update. “A fast- moving cold front will blast through the area overnight with most of the steady rain finished by 8 a.m. PDT Thursday, if not sooner.”
The potent storm will put nearly the entire central U.S. at risk of dangerous weather later this week, including what could be “the most significant severe weather outbreak of the year” so far, AccuWeather said. But first, the storm will dump several feet of snow along the Sierra Nevada and bring torrential rain to San Francisco, Los Angeles and San Diego. A smaller storm system moved over the state on Tuesday…