Blog: Studio City Soaked, More Rain On The Way

The skies opened up around the Los Angeles area on Wednesday night into early Thursday morning, drenching Studio City with much-needed rain. January had been a mainly dry month, with the only rainfall occurring in the first week of 2013.

The cut-off low pressure system spinning off the southern California coast brought the most significant rainfall of the season to date.  Nearly an inch or rain was recorded at the Studio City Weather Center, where rainfall rates exceeded a half-inch per hour at times.

The LA River came to life for the first time this season, Mike Syzmanski reported, as storm runoff from across the San Fernando Valley funneled through the flood control channel on it's way to the Pacific Ocean. 

This weather system actually caught forecasters off-guard. Many factors made this storm a tricky one to track. Closed, or "cut-off" low pressure systems are separated from the driving forces in the upper atmosphere, and their movements can be tough to predict. Additionally, several weeks of warm, dry weather had dried out the air at the surface, making it difficult to determine when the rain would actually start making it to the ground.

Now that the lower atmosphere is sufficiently moist, rain can fall unabated. And that's exactly what's expected for Thursday night into Friday morning, as another plume of subtropical moisture is streaming toward the region, bring more moderate rain to the area.

Up to an additional inch of rain is forecast to fall between now and Friday night. As of the time this article was written, no flood watches or warnings were in effect. You can check in with the Studio City Weather Center for updated information.

Rain will taper to showers on Friday, but the rain chance will stick around through the weekend before giving way to sunshine on Monday.