Just two more days – that’s all that’s left of the warm, humid and possibly wet weather that’s been making the Southland feel like the tropics for much of the week.
The storm system should be gone by Friday night and the weekend ahead should be great, with mostly sunny skies, highs in the low 80s in downtown Los Angeles and other inland areas and beach temperatures approaching 80.
The storm system out of the Pacific brought Southern California a chance of showers and thunderstorms Thursday, raising a risk of flash flooding and flows of mud and debris over slopes that wildfires have stripped of vegetation, forecasters said.
“While coast and valley areas will have a slight chance of showers and thunderstorms, higher chances will exist across the mountains during the afternoon and evening hours,” according to a National Weather Service statement. “The thunderstorm threat will shift eastward to interior Los Angeles County on Friday and end late Friday evening.”
Any thunderstorm will have the potential to generate heavy downpours because a southerly air flow has been streaming into the area ahead of the storm system, bringing increasing moisture and atmospheric instability, NWS forecasters said.
The strong flow will ensure that any thunderstorm Thursday morning slides over the region quickly, they said. But the air flow will weaken this afternoon, meaning any thunderstorm will linger.
In those conditions, heavy rain will produce “a risk of flash flooding and debris flows in recent burn areas,” warned an NWS statement.
The chance of measurable precipitation Thursday morning was generally set at 30 percent, although it was 40 percent in the Santa Clarita Valley and 50 percent in the Antelope Valley.
The NWS forecast a mix of showers and cloudy skies Thursday, along with highs of 76 degrees Fahenheit in San Clemente and on Mount Wilson; 78 in Avalon and Newport Beach; 79 at LAX and Laguna Beach; 81 in Mission Viejo; 82 in Long Beach, Irvine, Anaheim and downtown L.A.; 83 in San Gabriel and Palmdale; 84 in Fullerton, Saugus, Pasadena and Burbank; 85 in Yorba Linda and Lancaster; and 86 in Woodland Hills.
Friday’s highs will be marginally higher in some communities and marginally lower in others.
—City News Service