A soaked Southland and the mud-covered foothills of the San Gabriel Valley will dry out over the next week as skies clear and temperatures rise to and above 80 degrees, according to the National Weather Service.
Scattered showers Sunday, amounting to no more than a tenth of an inch of rain, represented the tail end of the large storm that triggered mudslides and evacuations in the foothill communities of Glendora, Azusa and Monrovia, Meteorologist David Sweet of the NWS office in Oxnard said. The storm dropped about 4 inches of rain on the foothills, and as much as 10 inches along the mountain ridge line.
One Los Angeles County city saw a rainfall record for the date broken during the storm, Sweet said. Lancaster on Friday received 1.67 inches of rain, breaking the existing record of 1.40 inches, set on Feb. 28, 1978.
“We’re expecting an end to the rainfall after (Sunday),” Sweet said, “with clear to partly cloudy skies Monday through the rest of the week into Saturday.”
“We’ll gradually warm Monday through Wednesday,” he added. “By Wednesday, we’ll have highs in the mid-70s to about 80.”
High temperatures will dip just a few degrees Thursday, but rebound for the weekend.
“Friday through Saturday, highs will again be in mid-70s through lower-80s,” Sweet said.
Temperatures were expected to follow a similar pattern, though a couple degrees warmer, in the Inland Empire, according to the NWS’s San Diego office.
Meanwhile, clean-up efforts continued Sunday throughout mudslide affected neighborhoods in the foothills of the northern San Gabriel Valley.
“This morning, our crews were out in recovery mode, removing fallen tree limbs, working to reopen roads by clearing rocks and mud and performing maintenance on debris basins and channels,” said Los Angeles County Department of Public Works spokesman Kerjon Lee.
As many as 300 county public works employees took part in storm-related efforts over the weekend, he added.
And while the storm won’t end Southern California’s drought, it didn’t hurt.
“The latest stormwater capture figure is 18,000 acre-feet, enough to support the demands of 144,000 people for a year,” Lee said.