Harry and Meghan’s Montecito neighborhood was among those in Southern California doused with several inches of rain and flash flooding on Thursday, leaving vehicles stranded on flooded roadways.
Nearby Oxnard got a month’s worth of rain in a single hour in a storm that pummeled Southern California while Christmas travel got underway, with more potentially set to hit the region on Friday.
The downpours targeted Ventura and covered Santa Barbara and Montecito, where the Duke and Duchess of Sussex live with their children. The family are currently away from home on holiday.
Counties northwest of Los Angeles County were also hit overnight, swamping areas in the cities of Port Hueneme, Oxnard and Santa Barbara, where a police detective carried a woman on his back after the SUV she was riding in got stuck in knee-deep floodwaters.
Between midnight and 1 a.m. local time, the storm dumped 3.18 inches of rainfall in downtown Oxnard, surpassing the area’s average of 2.56 inches for the entire month of December, according to the National Weather Service.
Harry and Meghan ‘s Montecito neighborhood was among those in Southern California doused with several inches of rain and flash flooding on Thursday , leaving vehicles stranded on flooded roadways
The downpours targeted Ventura and covered Santa Barbara and Montecito, where the Duke and Duchess of Sussex live with their children. The family are currently away from home on holiday
The deluge prompted flash flooding in Ventura County around 1:30 a.m., the weather service said.
Later in the morning, streets began filling with water in parts of Santa Barbara as the storm delivered another deluge.
By midday, the rain and wind had eased and residents ventured outside to look at the damage.
By late afternoon, the city of Port Hueneme had lifted evacuation orders for residences on four streets.
About 60 houses were affected by the orders, all in a senior citizen community, said Firefighter Andy VanSciver, a Ventura County fire spokesperson. An evacuation center was set up at a college gymnasium.
Three people from the senior community were taken to hospitals out of an abundance of caution, and there were multiple rescues of drivers from flooded vehicles, he said.
The city of Oxnard said in a social media post that many streets and intersections were heavily impacted.
‘Please stay off the city streets for the next several hours until the water recedes,’ the post said.
Santa Barbara Police Dept. detective Bryce Ford helps a motorist out of her car on a flooded street during a rainstorm
Dental assistant Lily Tovar mops the floor at Smile Dental Care after flooding from heavy rain
A man walks past a submerged vehicle on a flooded street in Santa Barbara
Counties northwest of Los Angeles County were also hit overnight, swamping areas in the cities of Port Hueneme, Oxnard and Santa Barbara, where a police detective carried a woman on his back after the SUV she was riding in got stuck in knee-deep floodwaters
A southbound off-ramp from Highway 101 in the Montecito neighborhood where Harry and Meghan live saw a minor mudslide and flooding
Between midnight and 1 a.m. local time, the storm dumped 3.18 inches of rainfall in downtown Oxnard, surpassing the area’s average of 2.56 inches for the entire month of December, according to the National Weather Service
By midday, the rain and wind had eased and residents ventured outside to look at the damage
A man watches motorists drive through a flooded street during a rain storm
‘This is a genuinely dramatic storm,’ climate scientist Daniel Swain, of the University of California, Los Angeles, said in an online briefing.
‘In Oxnard, particularly, overnight there were downpours that preliminary data suggests were probably the heaviest downpours ever observed in that part of Southern California.’
The National Weather Service issued a tornado warning for Oxnard and the city of Ventura at 1:28 a.m. due to a high-intensity thunderstorm, but no tornado activity was immediately observed, the Ventura County Sheriff’s Office said in a social media post.
Hours later at Heritage Coffee and Gifts in downtown Oxnard, manager Carlos Larios said the storm hadn´t made a dent in their Thursday morning rush despite ‘gloomy’ skies.
‘People are still coming in to get coffee, which is surprising,’ he said. ‘I don´t think the rain is going to stop many people from being out and about.’
The storm swept through Northern California earlier in the week as the center of the low-pressure system slowly moved south off the coast.
Forecasters described it as a ‘cutoff low,’ a storm that is cut off from the general west-to-east flow and can linger for days, increasing the amount of rainfall.
The system was producing hit-and-miss bands of precipitation rather than generalized widespread rainfall.
A vehicle is submerged in floodwaters near an overpass as rain comes down
The storm swept through Northern California earlier in the week as the center of the low-pressure system slowly moved south off the coast
‘This is a genuinely dramatic storm,’ climate scientist Daniel Swain, of the University of California, Los Angeles, said in an online briefing
A man tries to push a vehicle out of a flooded street as rain comes down in Santa Barbara
A fire hydrant is partly submerged on a flooded street
Forecasters said the low would wobble slightly away from the coast on Thursday, drawing moisture away and allowing some sunshine, but will return.
The San Diego-area weather office warned that rather than fizzling, the storm was gathering energy and its main core would move through that region overnight through Friday morning.
The National Weather Service has issued a Flood Watch for the county Friday, as well as much of southwestern California.
Showers and thunderstorms could dump up to 1.5 inches of rain through the day, but the real concern was that some areas could be drenched with a half-inch to an inch of rain in just an hour, causing streams, creeks and rivers to overflow, the weather service said.
Parts of Southern California are at a Level 2 slight risk for excessive rainfall Friday, according to the Weather Prediction Center.
On Thursday, motorists were stranded in their vehicles on flooded roadways northwest of Los Angeles.
Meanwhile, Californians were gearing up for holiday travel and finishing preparations for Christmas.
The Automobile Club of Southern California predicted 9.5 million people in the region would travel during the year-end holiday period.