Widespread rain and winds hit Southern California, with mountain snow on the way, leading to severe weather warning in many places Tuesday.
The National Weather Service issued up to a flood watch for the Ventura and Santa Barbara counties, including the San Gabriel Mountains, where the snow is expected up to the weekend, due to a storm system that is expected to form by Tuesday afternoon.
“It’s going to be quite a challenge to get the snow down off the mountain,” said Chris Jones with the National Weather Service in Oxnard. “It will be a large snowpack with quite an impact to the ground and will probably result in very wet conditions.”
The downpours can bring as much as 5 inches of rain to Los Angeles County, which has already been hammered by the storms that have left almost 2 feet of snow on the mountains.
“When the rain starts coming down, it’s really hard to get traction on the road,” Jones said.
The Los Angeles foothills have been battered, with the city facing its worst flooding in decades. The rains will also continue through Wednesday night.
The Ventura County Fire Battalion Chief said officials expect the number of fires to increase from 50 Tuesday afternoon to 180 this evening, with many of them burning to the edge of control, adding that “there’s some pretty serious out of control fires,” and urged residents “to be aware that if your house is on fire, stay inside and call 911.”
One fire that did take out a home this morning is now under control.
“We got a fire in the hills and we’ve got firefighters going back and forth to it,” Capt. Brian McDaniel, with the Ventura County Fire Department, told The Times. “There’s some damage on the roof but it’s under control.”
Several wildfires have ignited in a patch of wilderness where the Santa Susana Pass is the country’s largest road juncture. A total of seven fires have been reported, including at least one that is headed toward the Los Angeles area, according to the Los Angeles Fire Department.
The blaze in that wilderness was brought under control. Another fire was in the Santa Barbara County line and is 100% contained.
A blaze in Ventura County is also 100% contained, said Jennifer McPhee, a fire
