Rainfall Exceeds Los Angeles County Seasonal Average

Gray skies and rain-filled clouds loomed over Pacific Palisades during Super Bowl weekend, pummeling umbrella tops with heavy droplets.
On Friday, January 31, around 4:15 p.m., a boulder fell from the hills along Palisades Drive, crushing a passing motorist’s white BMW. The driver escaped without serious injury.
LAPD Beach Unit Officer Jimmy Soliman responded to the emergency call with firefighters from LAFD Station 23, who removed the boulder from the road.
On Monday, February 4, at 3:30 p.m. residents experienced a power outage in The Highlands and The Huntington neighborhoods that extended through Tuesday afternoon.
Notably, a thunderstorm also rolled through town over the past weekend, spurred on by the winter cold front.
“There are two times of year these thunderstorms occur,” meteorologist Jay Rosenthal told the Palisadian-Post. “It’s not an everyday or common event, but whenever the air is unstable, meaning that the air readily rises, then you get these big cumulonimbus clouds usually associated with winter cold fronts.
“We are currently in an El Niño year,” continued Rosenthal. “That’s where waters along the equator are relatively warm compared to normal, resulting in storm tracks coming closer to Southern California than Northern California or Oregon.”
Rosenthal explained that the closer we are to the center of the action, the more likely we are to have rain, winds and thunderstorm conditions—adding that sometimes the storms go north or south of the Palisades, but this year, we’re right in the center.“It’s going according to script; we’re having a very typical El Niño year,” he said.The rain is a welcome sight after last year’s abysmal rainfall total of just 4.03 inches—more than 10 inches under the seasonal average.“As of Monday, February 4, at 10:30 a.m., we have received 17.49 inches of rain this season,” local weather guru Craig Weston shared with the Post. “The season goes from July 1, 2018, through June 31, 2019—meaning we have now surpassed our average Los Angeles yearly rain total of 14.7 inches.”
The Palisades has had 4.65 inches of rain since January 31.
“By this weekend, we’ll have another storm moving in,” Rosenthal said. “Forecasts have pretty consistently shown over the last week that there will be a continuing stringof storms coming through the area from the west and northwest. In other words, it looks wet from now until about February 20.”
High winds and flooding were reported across the greater Los Angeles area. In nearby Malibu, rocks tumbled into the road at Big Rock Beach, and in Glendale, video taken of the LA River made viral rounds on the internet as the water surged over the concrete banks of the channel.