Southern California’s coast is preparing for another bout of flooding, with exceptionally high tides threatening roads, homes, businesses, beaches and rail service over the coming days.
The National Weather Service issued a coastal flood warning for the Orange County shoreline from Sunday morning through Thursday afternoon. Coastal sections of Los Angeles and Ventura counties are also under flood advisories.
The most serious flooding is expected during morning high tides from Monday through Thursday. Water levels could rise as much as 1.5 feet above forecasts, sending seawater inland across especially vulnerable portions of the coast.
In Newport Beach, tides are expected to reach at least 6 feet beginning Monday and could rise above 8 feet. Forecasters cautioned that low-lying homes and businesses along the Orange County coast may be flooded.
The warning follows flooding earlier this month, when water spread across sections of the Balboa Peninsula and forced residents to rush to protect their properties.
“I’ve lived here 30 years, and I’ve never seen anything like this,” Newport Beach resident Laura Hamilton said. “Down this street… There was just water all the way down.”
With another surge possible, Hamilton is stacking sandbags and moving vulnerable belongings away from the floors inside her home.
“Everything… sandbags upon sandbags, just trying to make sure everything is cleared off my floor,” she said.
The danger is not limited to residences. Floodwater could cover beach parking lots, bike trails and pedestrian walkways in Los Angeles and Ventura counties. The elevated tides may also accelerate erosion along beaches already at risk.
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Orange County Supervisor Katrina Foley said county crews are clearing waterways and taking other steps to limit the potential for flooding.
“County public works teams and flood district teams have been clearing all the debris from all the gutters, clearing the flood channels, making sure that we don’t have people living in the flood channels. We don’t want anyone getting hurt,” Foley said.
In Long Beach, crews are restoring and strengthening sand berms designed to protect the shoreline from encroaching water.
The unusually high tides are being driven by several overlapping conditions.
Dave Munyan, a National Weather Service meteorologist, said warmer ocean temperatures and changing Pacific conditions associated with El Niño are contributing to the threat.
“From a multitude of factors — one being the warmer sea surface temperatures we’re seeing off the coast contributing to a thermal expansion of the water. A warmer body of water will be a little bit thicker. The other factor is, it’s been a media buzzword, kind of over the last several weeks and months, but Kelvin wave influences, kind of driven by the ongoing El Niño across the Pacific Ocean, kind of producing a slosh effect, which is kind of bolstering those background tides,” Munyan said.
Authorities are advising residents to follow local emergency alerts, check for road closures and avoid driving through floodwater or around barricades.
The high tides could also cause major disruptions for coastal travelers.
Metrolink plans to suspend Orange County Line service south of the Laguna Niguel/Mission Viejo station from Monday through Friday. The move will disrupt rail travel along the vulnerable coastal route toward San Clemente and Oceanside.
Officials said announcing the suspension in advance will give passengers time to make other plans while reducing the chance that weather-related problems will ripple through the wider rail system.
“It also reduces cascading effects that happen to the rest of the Metrolink system north of Laguna Niguel/Mission Viejo. It also provides greater flexibility for Amtrak and freight trains to navigate any weather-related restrictions or delays that will happen next week,” Metrolink public relations manager Brett Hawkins said.