California braces for series of El Nino storms

Rain, mountain snow and unsafe high surf will come to the Los Angeles area overnight on Sunday as a series of Pacific storms bear down on the region.

Powell said about 2 feet of fresh snow are expected to fall this week in the Sierra Nevada’s highest points.

The first of at least three storms is scheduled to drop anywhere from a ¼ inch to ½ an inch of rain by late Monday, according to the National Weather Service in Oxnard.

Climate scientists are predicting that this year’s El Nino, one of the most powerful on record, could create especially severe conditions in Southern California.

That much rain in a short period could bring flooding and debris flows, and residents near the sites of previous wildfires were urged to monitor weather reports and consider preparing sand bags. During a brief news conference Sunday night, Garcetti said the city has spent months clearing out thousands of storm strains and it will also activate its emergency operation centers to track the storms.

L.A. County could get between 2 and 3 inches of rain by Tuesday night, with parts of the Southland expected to get up to six inches of rain by Friday, according to the National Weather Service.

An effort also was under way to provide shelter for homeless people.

“The overall pattern that is bringing us these storms is finally looking like what we would expect the El Nino pattern to look like that it so far hasn’t this summer”, said John Dumas, science and operations officer for the NWS.

The final system is expected to bring rain to the Central Coast on Thursday with a 10 percent possibility of rain on Friday, according to the Weather Channel. The storm is more likely to bring heavier rain from Baja California, Mexico into Arizona and New Mexico.

Two to 3-and-a-half-inches of rain is predicted from the coast through the inland valleys and twice that in the foothills and lower coastal slopes of the San Bernardino, San Gabriel and San Jacinto Mountains.