Los Angeles Weather: Storm Heading to the Southland

LOS ANGELES, CA — Southland residents are bracing for a larger round of rainfall across the region early Monday as a result of a heavy storm generated by a weather phenomenon known as an atmospheric river.

Monday's rainfall could start as early as midnight and will be heavier in the Southland than was the case on Saturday, according to National Weather Service Specialist Bonnie Bartling.

The rain could be moderate to heavy, lasting through the morning commute and drop a half-inch to one inch of precipitation in the L.A. Basin and 1 1/2 inches in the mountain areas.

The Southland could bet on "a little break Tuesday and possibly another system Wednesday," she said.

An earlier storm hit the state Saturday, but the Weather Service said the heaviest rain from that system remained in northern and Central California as has been the case with most of the rainfall in recent weeks.

The South Coast Basin got between a trace of rain in Long Beach to almost half an inch at Hanson Dam and more than a half-inch at Crystal Lake on Saturday, Bartling said.

"It was rain," Bartling said of the storm that moved south to north Saturday morning. "It's coming back as a cold front early Monday morning."

Unlike many of the storms that strike the Southland, the one approaching hails not from the Gulf of Alaska but from the west, produced by a long and narrow column of water vapor in the atmosphere called an atmospheric river. Such phenomena account for between 30 and 50 percent of annual precipitation on the West Coast, the NWS said.

Temperatures will range from 50s in the valleys to low 60s in the L.A. Basin were likely, Bartling said. "More like a normal winter."

— City News Service, photo via Shutterstock