It’s Raining in Southern California

Heavy rain from a powerful storm that swept through California yesterday flooded a freeway

and sent residents in some wildfire-scarred communities scrambling to evacuate as authorities warned of mudflows from unstable hillsides.

The rain began falling overnight in Northern California, but the heaviest downpours were expected in Southern California later in the day, prompting both relief in the drought-stricken state and concern about flooding and mudslides on denuded slopes.

Coastal residents also braced for the thick tangle of garbage and debris that gets washed from city streets, into storm drains and then onto beaches during the first major winter storm each year.

Three years of devastating drought has left the Sierra Nevada snowpack – which counts for most of the state’s water supply – at just 24 percent of normal for this time of year. Downtown Los Angeles has had less than half of the rain it would have in a normal year.

In Camarillo Springs, about 50 miles northwest of Los Angeles, the immediate concern was not drought but mudflows that began before noon from hillsides that burned more than a year ago.

A dozen homes were under a mandatory evacuation order as heavy rain pounded the Ventura County community. Water gushed into the street, and large bulldozers moved rocks and debris from stormwater channels. A mudslide in the same area on Halloween buried one home in mud 3 feet deep.