Los Angeles River rages amid atmospheric river

Extreme Meteorologist Dr. Reed Timmer reports from the Los Angeles River, where an atmospheric river has dumped flooding rain on Feb. 5.

Transcript

00:00 The Los Angeles River continues to rage down through the LA Metro. Flash flood

00:05 warnings to the Santa Monica Mountains and this had a flow rate approaching

00:09 40,000 cubic feet per second overnight. Many people say it's the biggest flow

00:14 that they've seen in 37 years out here. A lot of flooding in the urban areas and

00:18 especially in the Santa Monica Mountains where about eight to ten inches of

00:22 rainfall happened last night. Rainfall totals up there could easily exceed a

00:26 foot after today's rainfall as the plume of moisture with this atmospheric river

00:31 is parked over the LA basin including the LA Metro. So because soils are so

00:37 saturated anything that falls is going to go straight to runoff and likely lead

00:41 to life-threatening flash flooding and this is just going to continue to stream

00:45 across Southern California. The rainfall impacts will subside tomorrow but the

00:49 snow will continue across the higher elevations as that cold air begins to

00:53 filter in. There are about four or five fire trucks here doing swift water

00:57 rescues. There were some homeless people out here that needed to be rescued as

01:01 this torrent developed yesterday evening and also today. But big flooding all this

01:06 water flowing toward the Pacific Ocean here downtown Los Angeles definitely

01:10 makes the ocean waters a little bit dirtier out there certainly but the

01:14 atmospheric river definitely giving this area some much-needed rainfall. The

01:19 problem is a lot of times it comes all at once here in the winter in

01:22 California so definitely stay off the roads if you can turn around don't

01:26 drown especially in those mountainous areas and be safe because a dangerous

01:30 day again here across Southern California.