Pineapple Express Shuts Down Southern California Roads as Next Atmospheric River Takes Aim at Region

A sign on Broadway in Long Beach warning drivers of “Flooded” streets after the Pineapple Express hit the region
The Pineapple Express, an atmospheric river, arrived in Southern California on Thursday and brought with it flash flooding, damaging winds, power outages, and potential landslides.
The storm had soaked Northern California on Wednesday with up to 8” (131 ml) of rain, breaking multiple daily rainfall records, and moved south, flooding roads, homes and businesses, and snarling traffic.
A Pineapple Express, not to be confused with the 2008 stoner film of the same name, is a non-technical term for a meteorological phenomenon, a specific recurring atmospheric river characterized by a strong and persistent large-scale flow of warm moist air, and the associated heavy precipitation both in the waters immediately northeast of the Hawaiian Islands and extending northeast to any location along the Pacific coast of North America.
Sections of the Pacific Coast Highway were closed in Southern California due to flooding, including stretches in Huntington Beach and Santa Monica, while part of US 101 was covered in floodwaters in Ventura.
In Long Beach, severe flooding from the storm caused the shutdown of a portion of the southern segment of Interstate 710, known officially as the Long Beach Freeway, which runs north from Long Beach to Valley Boulevard, just north of Interstate 10, the San Bernardino Freeway. The shutdowns snarled Long Beach traffic and photographs posted on social media show the southbound lanes filled with autos and trucks trying to make their way through a couple of feet of standing water, many unsuccessfully.
One resident, Kyle Cohen, who works in the tech industry and lives near Broadway, reported that multiple local businesses including a Starbucks had experienced flooding as did his own apartment building.
“I can tell that my apartment building is not equipped for the type of weather we are getting because I am looking at what I think is raw sewage in my bathtub from a backup,” he said.
Despite the partly sunny skies currently in the region, the pattern of storms won’t end on Thursday. Another storm that could have greater impact is forecast to slam into Southern California starting in the late part of the weekend.
“[This storm] has a growing potential for damaging flooding and is the one of most concern (this week),” the National Weather Service office in Los Angeles said earlier on Thursday.
(Photo: Accura Media Group)