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Rain showers dampen MLK Day holiday in Southern California

People ride along a Dockweiler State Beach bike path on Playa Del Rey on Monday
People ride along a Dockweiler State Beach bike path Monday in Playa Del Rey.
(Dania Maxwell / Los Angeles Times)
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Rain showers danced across Southern California on Monday , throwing a wet blanket on the Martin Luther King Jr. holiday.

“The totals are not that heavy, but you certainly want to be cautious if you’re driving,” said David Sweet, a meteorologist for the National Weather Service in Oxnard.

The weather service said that a band of steady showers with moderate to briefly heavy rain was moving across the region. The storm continued throughout the day, but was expected to dissipate before Tuesday.

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Parts of Ventura County got slightly more than an inch Monday, while other areas in the region saw scattered showers, meteorologists said.

The rain canceled at least one MLK Day event in Los Angeles County. An annual clothing collection and community breakfast hosted by the nonprofit Big Sunday was called off because of the weather, organizers said. The event, scheduled from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. at 6111 Melrose Ave., will be rescheduled, but a new date and time had not immediately been set.

At other holiday events, including a number of coronavirus testing pop-up clinics, highs were in the low to mid-60s. The annual Kingdom Day Parade, which typically includes floats, drill teams and marching bands along a route running from the intersection of Western Avenue and Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard to Leimert Park, was canceled for the second year in a row because of COVID-19 concerns.

Monday’s showers were an encore to very light rain that fell over the weekend, Sweet said, although no rainfall could be measured.

The brief rains follow record-breaking storms that drenched California in December. The state received more precipitation in the final three months of 2021 than in the previous 12 months, the National Weather Service said.

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But forecasters do not expect the rain to last.

“Later this week, we go into a very dry, warm and possibly windy scenario,” Sweet said.

Temperatures will reach the mid-70s on Thursday, with winds kicking in over the weekend.

Rain totals have been closer to normal in January following at least 10 inches of rain that marked the third wettest December on record, Sweet said.

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