Ken Clark gives an update on a busy week of severe weather for Southern California that has brought heavy rain and even a reported tornado. Snow and rain were also widespread in the rest of the state.
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00:00Ken, I talked about some of the rainfall amounts, but it's been a very, very busy morning
00:06in California, Southern California, with severe weather.
00:10Severe weather. We've had a lot of heavy rain, strong wind gusts ahead of the cold front before
00:15it moved through. In fact, there may have been, and National Weather Service is going to check
00:19this out, a tornado in the Pico Rivera area of Los Angeles, which is just southeast of downtown
00:26Los Angeles, at 315 this morning. Certainly some wind damage there. Trees are down,
00:31and they're going to investigate that. So we've had all kinds of weather, strong winds, heavy
00:35rains, and now we turn things, once the cold front's through, to showers and thunderstorms
00:40the rest of today, and there could be some more severe weather. Yeah, take a look at the radar.
00:44There's that heavy rain band now out of L.A. in San Diego, but we still have the upper low,
00:49and boy, oh boy, can you look at the satellite. It looks like popcorn, right? Because there's so
00:54much cold air aloft, and this is the way California gets severe weather, right, as that
01:00upper low comes in. That's right, and there's already lightning showing up on satellite data
01:06and surface observations. Offshore, even, there's lightning, and we haven't even started the heating
01:12of the day. Get a little sun mixed in between the clouds during the day today. Atmosphere
01:17is going to be very unstable, producing showers, even a few thunderstorms, and twisting motion of
01:22the atmosphere means that there could be some water spouts or a brief tornado, too, and with the
01:27thunderstorms, some hail because snow levels are very low, freezing levels are very low, and there
01:32could be some small hail as well. I was looking at some of the observations, Ken. I saw 23 to 30
01:38inches of new snow in Mammoth Mountain. Meanwhile, it looks like to me the Sierra snow lab at Soda
01:45Springs. Ken, that's at around 73, 7,300 feet. Is that right around 7,000 feet? Right around
01:52there, yes. Yeah, I mean, I think that probably out of about 30 inches of snow, when you do the math,
01:58you know, we're still running a little bit below normal in the Sierra snowpack, but we're getting
02:03closer and closer to where we should be. We're in the mid-70s in the central and southern Sierra
02:08right now. We're probably going to end up with another a foot or so of snow today, then maybe
02:14one to three feet of snow as we go through Friday through early next week. Let's talk about the next
02:19two storms, Ken. You can see them on the satellite here. The first is south of the
02:27Aleutians. By the way, yeah, again, I have these labels wrong. That's going to be what's going to
02:32come in there. So, oh, that's coming into California again as we get into Friday. That's
02:36the severe weather maker Saturday in the mid-south, and then there's another storm behind that, Ken.
02:42But unlike this storm that targeted all of California, these next two are mostly going
02:48to be in central and northern California, although there could be some rain in southern
02:52California. Friday system is probably going to bring some rain to southern California,
02:56but not heavy amounts. Everywhere across California, we've got some rain for Friday
03:00system, and then this Sunday-Monday one will mainly target the northern half or two-thirds
03:05of the state, it looks like. But more rain, more snow, and snow levels on Friday system
03:11is going to be sneakily low. Again, 3,000 feet, so there's going to be problems from that.
03:16Ken, it's a little early, and this is something that we're going to get together and talk about,
03:21but the rain that we've seen in February and March may have saved at least southern California from
03:30an expanding area of drought. I think that's true, and I think with more rain to come,
03:36and there may be even just a few more storms before we get into April. So I think we're
03:41looking okay. It's not like it's what we expected this year. It's a lot meaner. It's
03:46going to be below normal, but I think we're going to be in a better shape, obviously,
03:51by the end of the spring than we were, let's say, back in early and mid-January.
03:56So things are looking good there. All right. AccuWeather California expert meteorologist
04:01Ken Clark. Ken, as always, we appreciate all the information, and we're going to keep in
04:05touch with you. And again, we're going to take a look at this season and see what we can gain
04:09from it as we move forward.