Storm Loses Power but Still Packs Lots of Rain : Weather: Two systems were expected to combine and threaten the Southland with rain and high tides. However, one front has moved farther south, lessening the expected impact.

Although a powerful winter storm lost the added punch of its tropical twin Tuesday, Southern California is still expected to be soaked today with a couple of inches of rain, prompting rescue teams in Orange and Los Angeles counties to brace for potential flooding.

The storm, born in the frigid Gulf of Alaska, arrived Tuesday night, bringing occasionally heavy showers that will continue through Thursday. But a tropical storm from Hawaii that had been predicted to converge on this area shortly before the other one instead moved farther south, with most of its rain falling in Baja California.

“It’s been downgraded quite a bit. We’re expecting one to two inches of rain in the coastal areas, and two to three inches in the mountains,” Bill Reiter, head of Orange County’s storm operations center, said Tuesday afternoon. “The one from the north is a powerful winter storm, but the other one moved south and won’t materialize in the amounts that were originally predicted.”

Before it even began to drizzle, some meteorologists had compared the approaching weather systems to the powerful storms in 1983 that chewed up piers and flooded homes along the coast of Orange and Los Angeles counties.

But on Tuesday, Southern Californians awoke to a bright morning sky with high clouds. By the afternoon, when skies were becoming increasingly cloudy, weather forecasters were saying that the dual storms might not be as bad as expected, although flood warnings were still posted.

The National Weather Service issued warnings of potential flash flooding and mudslides, particularly in the coastal mountains and valleys of northern Los Angeles County.

Reiter said the rain probably won’t fall as furiously as it did Dec. 7, when four inches soaked Orange County in only six hours but caused relatively minor problems.

Still, he said, “we aren’t taking it lightly. We’ve been putting sandbags in various locations, and have sandbags stockpiled on our trucks.”

The 120-member Orange County Search and Rescue team was placed on alert Tuesday afternoon. The specially trained team stood ready with four vehicles, a generator trailer for lighting, a rescue truck and a response trailer with enough boots, traffic direction equipment and other supplies for 40 rescue members. The rescue team will man barricades, direct traffic and treat injuries, said spokeswoman Joyce Glen.

The tropical storm started dropping rain on offshore islands at nightfall Tuesday.

Rick Dittmann, a meteorologist with WeatherData Inc., said Tuesday that the rain would probably last through Thursday. And a third storm could bring more over the weekend.

Dittmann believes that the storms will be worse than what Orange County storm center’s forecasters predicted. He says that up to four inches could fall in Los Angeles, and four to eight inches in the foothills.

The National Weather Service said the chance of rain today is 90%, with a 70% chance Thursday. It posted a winter storm advisory for the local mountains and a small-craft advisory for outer coastal waters. Moderate 15- to 25-m.p.h. winds and a western swell of three feet in coastal waters were predicted.

Orange County’s biggest flood threat is the Santa Ana River, which runs from the San Bernardino Mountains to the ocean off Huntington Beach. A major series of storms could cause it to overflow and flood one-third of Orange County.

And the storm is arriving at the same time that Southern California experiences the highest tides in a year, so weather experts warned that some flooding could also occur in vulnerable beachfront areas. Included are the Sunset Beach-Huntington Harbour area and Capistrano Beach, where only narrow strips of sand protect homes from storm-driven waves.

The highest tides, about 6 1/2 feet, are expected between 7 and 9 a.m. today through Sunday. Winds could stir up large waves, and lagoons and coastal wetlands that normally serve as filters could overflow.

“That is obviously a very big concern for us. With the high tides, it makes it very difficult for the channels to drain,” Reiter said.

Malibu is expected to be one of the areas hardest hit today and Thursday, with flooding and mudslides expected in the canyons, along with the possible wave damage.

At County Fire Station 70, about two miles east of the celebrity-studded Malibu Colony, residents intent on building flood barriers queued up throughout the day on Tuesday, filling up bags with sand from two loads hauled in earlier in the day.

“They must have taken at least 2,000 bags out this morning, and they’re doing the same thing at the other stations in the Santa Monica Mountains,” said Fire Capt. Wayne Miller, the station commander.

“People are coming in here with trucks, cars, everything,” Miller said. “One car went out of here so loaded down that the suspension was dragging on the ground.”

Along the beach at Malibu, there was little that residents could do but sit, wait and hope for the best.

Kathleen Garfield, who lost part of her deck to the waves in 1986, said that for oceanfront residents, “sandbags are meaningless.”

She said the storm seven years ago “washed away easily a dozen feet of sand. It scoured the beach bare.”

Heavy equipment and camp crews will be standing by in Malibu at dawn today, Miller said. Strike teams of fire engines and firefighters are to be brought in to augment the normal staffing.

“We’re totally geared up for a big storm,” Miller said.

Dittmann predicted that rains could melt the snow in moderately high elevations of the mountains today, causing large amounts of runoff in low-lying areas along creeks and rivers.

“This could become an exceptional event,” he said, because prolonged heavy rains would saturate the ground, causing mudslides in the canyons and flooding runoff areas.

About 50 Orange County Jail inmates, plus regular county crews, will be available to lay sandbags. Flood-control channels were checked and cleaned, and the storm operations center stood ready to kick into gear at the first sign of rain, Reiter said.

FLOODS TO REMEMBER: The same storm conditions exist as those of 1983 and ’88 but the impact won’t be as severe, experts say. B10

Possible Trouble Spots

A storm expected today will produce less rain than was earlier predicted. But it may still flood some trouble spots. Here’s a look at past rainfall amounts and some alternative routes.

Record Daily Rainfall

In inches, for 24 hours in Santa Ana:

Dec. 26, 1956: 4.22 Feb. 24, 1969: 3.55 March 7, 1952: 3.42 Jan. 16, 1952: 3.40 Jan. 25, 1969: 2.77

Source: WeatherData; Researched by DANNY SULLIVAN / Los Angeles Times