Heavy rain from a major atmospheric river storm moved across Southern California on Thursday, causing significant flooding and road closures — as well as several water rescues.
Even before the storm system had moved on, however, officials were shifting attention to another one tracking not far behind, expected to bring even more intense and sustained precipitation.
“There has been some flooding from today’s storm across parts of SoCal, especially in/near Long Beach, but the [next] system has *much greater* potential for more widespread and more serious flooding/debris flows,” Daniel Swain, a UCLA climate scientist and meteorologist, wrote in a post on X. That second storm continues to develop in the Pacific, but the National Weather Service’s latest forecasts show it bringing more rain and wind to the Los Angeles area likely by this weekend, with the potential to cause life-threatening flooding.
Forecasters say that coming system could be slower-moving — enabling it to dump larger amounts of rain on certain areas — than Thursday’s storm, which moved at a relatively fast clip, making its effects less dramatic.