Southland’s warm, sunny weather give way to rain this week

An approaching storm system is expected to bring cold and wet conditions to Southern California this week after an unseasonably warm Christmas weekend.

The winter storm system which arrived Tuesday afternoon in Santa Barbara, moved into Los Angeles County during the evening.

The forecast called for moderate to heavy rainfall, producing about half an inch to an inch of rain in the Los Angeles area with snow in the higher elevations above 6,000 feet.

Temperatures will drop to the low to mid-60s during the week.

“There will be continued showers after that system,� said Joe Sirard, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service.
A chance of showers will remain through the rest of the week into Saturday night, which is New Year’s Eve.

A high-pressure ridge in the Pacific warmed up the California coast last holiday weekend, resulting in a warm and sunny Christmas in Los Angeles, the National Weather Service said. Temperatures in the low 80s on Sunday neared record-breaking levels.

Meanwhile, it had been a rough holiday weekend for much of the country.

Hundreds of flights were delayed or canceled out of Los Angeles International Airport over the weekend as a “bomb cyclone� weather pattern tore across the United States, bringing record-breaking cold temperatures nearly everywhere but California.

Meteorologists called the winter storm a “once-in-a-generation-type event� that affected more than 100 million people and resulted in more than two dozen deaths across the northern half of the United States.