Across the Southland, millions woke up this morning to what one expert called a “rare, potentially historic type of event.”
“We are talking about unprecedented, potentially historic amounts of heavy rainfall and flooding landslides, debris flows,” said Ariel Cohen, a meteorologist for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. “That will create a very dangerous situation across Southern California.”
The Pineapple Express, as it’s been referred to, is a type of atmospheric river named because of where it originated from: the ocean near Hawaii.
“An atmospheric river occurs in the North Pacific when two atmospheric circulation systems come together, and it funnels moisture from the subtropics around Hawaii towards the California coast,” Lowell Scott, an Earth Sciences professor at USC, said.
As a result of the system, heavy downpours of 1 to 3 inches are expected across SoCal Thursday night into Friday morning, causing dangerous driving conditions and a number of weather-related advisories to be issued by the National Weather Service (NWS), including high surf advisories along the coast and flood watches throughout the region.
Cohen said Californians should be preparing for a “reasonable worst-case scenario of life-threatening floods,” including making alternate arrangements for travel, staying home if possible, seeking higher ground and placing sandbags around their property if they’re in flood-prone areas.
For those who cannot avoid travel, the California Highway Patrol has been closely monitoring the situation on area highways.
“Within a half hour period, we saw over 30 traffic collisions in L.A. County alone,” CHP Officer Luis Quintero said. “All freeways were impacted.”
According to Quintero, patrolmen were seeing all of the same types of incidents they’re used to during inclement weather such as spin-outs, single-car collisions and flooded freeway lanes.
And while the morning storms caused a number of issues Thursday, Cohen said the worst isn’t expected until the start of next week.
“Well, we haven’t seen rainfall rates like that in our historical records ever before,” she said. “This is a rare, potentially historic type of event.”