Southern California Braces for Potential Rain and Thunderstorms
The Los Angeles region is expected to experience light rain this week, with a small chance of thunderstorms bringing more precipitation, according to the National Weather Service. Carol Smith, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Oxnard, stated that there is a 10% chance of rainfall across Los Angeles County on Tuesday night, which drops to as low as 5% going into Wednesday. The interior valleys and mountain areas of the Southland are most likely to see rain, with a slight chance of precipitation in the valleys and along the coast.
Previous Storms and Current Conditions
Although conditions will not come close to the intense showers and winds Los Angeles County experienced last week, there is a slight chance of thunderstorms, particularly over the mountain areas of Ventura and Santa Barbara counties. This could carry over into Los Angeles County near the Grapevine area of the 5 Freeway, Smith said. The previous storm brought enough moisture to Southern California’s drought-stricken landscape to delay fire season for weeks, if not months, according to Marty Ralph, director of the Center for Western Weather and Water Extremes at UC San Diego’s Scripps Institution of Oceanography.
The storm dumped about 2.17 inches of rain in Bel-Air, 2.10 inches in Beverly Hills, 1.27 inches in downtown Los Angeles, and 3.28 inches in Woodland Hills. The last time downtown got more than an inch of rain in a single day in October was 2009, said John Dumas, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Oxnard. Experts say that last week’s rain tamped down the threat of fire, at least temporarily.
Risk of Dry Lightning and Fire
Those areas could see some isolated dry lightning during the storm, which occurs when there is dry air near the ground during a thunderstorm and can bring a risk of fire. “Any part of a thunderstorm has updrafts and downdrafts, and you get these downdrafts with rain if there’s enough moisture,” Smith said. “But if you don’t have very much moisture and really dry air in the lower levels of the atmosphere, it just evaporates.” This leads to virga, which is rain that appears to be dropping from a cloud but evaporates before it reaches the ground.
The potential midweek moisture likely won’t alter the dry conditions meteorologists are predicting for the coming winter months, Smith said. At the start of October, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration announced that La Niña conditions had officially returned, which typically drives drought conditions in Southern California. As La Niña returns, Southern California continues to be at a relatively high risk for fire and severe drought, according to the U.S. Drought Monitor.
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