Southland Braces for Another Strong but Short-Lived Storm

Sunday’s brief break in the rain was not a signal to get the car washed, meteorologists warned. Rain-soaked California will probably get wetter still.

A new low-pressure system, stronger than the one that gave the West Coast a wet weekend, is expected to move onshore across Central California early this morning, sending showers southward that will grow stronger in the afternoon as it heads toward Los Angeles, forecasters said.

However, according to WeatherData Inc. in Wichita, Kan., which supplies forecasts for The Times, there is some good news: The system is quick-moving and likely to give way to increasingly warmer temperatures and partly cloudy skies as early as Tuesday.

“It’s going to be occasionally intense, but it’s not going to last for a very long time,” said WeatherData meteorologist Wes Etheredge.

The system is expected to dump 1 to 3 inches at lower elevations, more in the Southern California mountains, Etheridge said.

By midday Wednesday, however, temperatures could climb back into the mid-60s, Etheredge said.

On Sunday, some of Southern California’s hardest-hit areas used the sunshine to shore up for the next bout of rain.

In Ventura County, 10 people were evacuated from a mudslide-threatened apartment building. That group joined 12 families forced to flee last week from another building on the same block in west Ventura’s Cedar Street. Meanwhile, a separate mudslide caused the rupture of a crude oil pipeline in the hills north of Ventura, spilling 168 gallons. In recent days, another oil line and two natural gas pipelines nearby also have split, each causing a spill.

In Orange County, workers braced for threats on several fronts:

Irvine Lake, already swollen by a series of storms, probably will spill over before dawn Tuesday if it rains hard today, said Bill Reiter, the director of the county’s storm center.

In Laguna Beach, city crews and residents worked throughout the day to gird for potential mudslides, temporarily closing Laguna Canyon Road between the San Diego Freeway and El Toro Road.

And in the Aliso Creek channel, a “major erosion concern” threatened to undermine a large natural gas line. Workers scrambled Sunday to divert water away from the crumbling area, Reiter said.

Times staff writer Abigail Goldman contributed to this report.