Scattered showers greet commuters as rainy weather rolls into Southern California

Cloudy skies and scattered showers greeted morning commuters and created a mess on freeways as a low-pressure system began its trek through Southern California on Wednesday.

Forecasters had predicted the wet weather would arrive with similar intensity to last week’s storm, which prompted evacuations and triggered fast-moving debris flows near the Holy fire burn area in Trabuco Canyon and Lake Elsinore. However, dry easterly winds are expected to remove some of the moisture from this system, meaning precipitation will be considerably lighter, said Rich Thompson, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Oxnard.

“It won’t even be as heavy as it looks on the radar,” he said. “At this point, we’re not really expecting any tremendous issues for burn areas.”

The storm, which is expected to linger through Thursday, will drop about a half-inch of rain on the region. Mountain areas will probably see a bit more precipitation. There’s also the possibility the system could bring isolated thunderstorms on Thursday, Thompson said.

Intermittent showers early Wednesday left roads slick and caused some traffic issues on freeways. The carpool lane on the northbound and southbound 14 Freeway in Santa Clarita was closed for several hours after a semi truck jackknifed across the center divider north of Newhall Avenue, according to the California Highway Patrol.

Chilly temperatures that have lingered since last week’s storm will continue through the rest of the week. Temperatures are expected to remain in the low to mid-60s during the day and drop into the low 50s at night, according to forecasters.

The mercury is expected to rise — but only slightly — into the high 60s heading into the weekend.

hannah.fry@latimes.com

Twitter: @Hannahnfry

UPDATES:

11:20 a.m.: This article was updated with new traffic information.

This article was originally published at 8:15 a.m.