Southern California battered by strong winds, rain and damaging coastal flooding as Rachel makes landfall

Share via Close extra sharing options Email Facebook X LinkedIn Threads Reddit WhatsApp Copy Link URL Copied! Print Oceanfront residents in Long Beach under an evacuation order

Share via Close extra sharing options Email Facebook X LinkedIn Threads Reddit WhatsApp Copy Link URL Copied! Show more Share via Close extra sharing options Email Facebook X LinkedIn Threads Reddit WhatsApp Copy Link URL Copied! Print Coastal communities bracing for Rachel amid flood threat

Coastal communities including Newport Beach, Lomg Beach, San Diego, Laguna Beach and Huntington Beach are bracing for high tide Sunday morning as Rachel moves through the region.

Rachel is expected to pass to the south but should create wave action to the north.

Long Beach’s mandatory order covers homes on Seaside Walk between 64th and 66th places. It took effect at 7 p.m. Friday and runs through noon Tuesday, city officials said. A commercial crane is scheduled to drop sandbags on 65th Place and westward in front of addresses between 65th and 64th, city officials said.

Waves topped the bulkhead and sent water into homes and streets, according to city officials. Inspectors red-tagged eight buildings across 13 addresses, including apartments, and yellow-tagged at least one, Mayor Rex Richardson said Saturday. A red tag marks a building as unsafe to enter, and a yellow tag restricts its use.

The city closed the Peninsula to nonresident traffic, with more street closures starting at 62nd Place.

Huntington Beach also activated its emergency operations center Friday, the city said. Many spectators watched pounding waves there at high tide Saturday morning. Cyclists, walkers and runners packed the white concrete trail along Bolsa Chica State Beach. A section that flooded Friday appeared to escape more trouble Saturday, despite signs that said “flooded.”

Newport Beach temporary closed some beach areas Saturday.

The weather service expects more coastal flooding Sunday, when high tide at Newport Beach is forecast to reach 7.6 feet at 9:48 a.m. “Low-lying property including homes, businesses, and some critical infrastructure may flood,” the agency’s San Diego office said. Surf could reach 6 to 9 feet, highest at south-facing beaches, especially in Orange County, Roser said.

Water at the Los Angeles Harbor tide gauge peaked at 7.7 feet Saturday morning, about 1.6 feet above the predicted tide, the National Weather Service said. “The projected high tides of around 8 feet for Sunday morning would approach or exceed recent record tide levels for L.A. County,” it said.

Share via Close extra sharing options Email Facebook X LinkedIn Threads Reddit WhatsApp Copy Link URL Copied! Print Rachel is rare for the weather history books thanks to El Nino

Rachel is expected to make landfall either in northern Baja California or San Diego County. It’s unclear how strong it will be at landfall.

In the modern record, only two storms have passed through the state at tropical-storm strength.

The first — nicknamed El Cordonazo, or the Lash of St. Francis — hit Long Beach and San Pedro in September 1939. It dumped 5.62 inches of rain on L.A. over three days, spawned wind gusts of up to 65 mph and resulted in 45 deaths from flooding, with an additional 48 deaths at sea.

There was also Nora in September 1997, which was briefly at tropical storm strength as its center passed along the California-Arizona border, but California was spared the kind of damage it delivered to Baja California. Street flooding was reported in Imperial County, the Coachella Valley and San Diego, while big waves boosted by Nora and another storm sent breakers crashing into beachfront properties in Seal Beach, seriously damaging three homes and resulting in minor damage to 45 others.

Nora arrived during a “very strong” El Niño season. That pattern is linked to above-average hurricane activity in the eastern Pacific, and also is usually tied to above-average rainfall for Southern California in the winter.

That climate pattern sees the heating of ocean waters in the central and eastern equatorial Pacific, which spur changes in the atmosphere that can affect weather around the world.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Climate Prediction Center said Thursday that there is virtually a 100% chance that the El Niño this season will be categorized as “very strong.” There’s also an 83% chance that this El Niño will be the strongest on record, which goes back to 1950, up from a 75% probability forecast last month.