Los Angeles flash flooding leaves city unrecognizable: "Genuinely nuts" (2024)

Los Angeles residents have been left incredulous after heavy rains and flash flooding hit southern California as tropical storm Hilary made landfall on Sunday.

Locals posted images and videos on social media of large, rapidly-moving flows along the Los Angeles River, which usually only carries a small amount of water in the typically hot, dry region.

"For those of you who have never lived in L.A., this image is genuinely nuts," Matthew Chapman wrote on X, formerly Twitter. "The L.A. 'River' is barely even a river most of the time. Usually it's either a tiny trickle of water at the bottom of a concrete bed, or just completely dry."

The National Weather Service (NWS) has issued a flash flood warning for the area, and in its latest forecast discussion wrote that in southwestern U.S. states, the "ongoing and potentially historic amount of rainfall" is expected to cause "life-threatening to locally catastrophic" flooding including landslides.

Ahead of the storm's arrival, on Saturday, California Governor Gavin Newsom declared an emergency.

"We're mobilizing all of government as we prepare and respond to this unprecedented storm," he said, noting the 7,500 National Guards deployed to protect communities from flooding.

Ventura County firefighters were on Sunday night searching for one person trapped in the Santa Clara River, with a further two rescued.

Storm Hilary has already left a path of destruction along the Pacific coast of Mexico, with one woman drowning in floodwaters on Saturday, Mulegé Mayor Edith Aguilar Villavicencio announced on Saturday.

A swathe of northern Los Angeles, as well as Malibu, San Fernando and Santa Clarita are under flash flood warnings until 6 a.m. ET on Monday. On Sunday, the local NWS station said it was "a day for the ages," with as much as six inches of rain falling in the foothills of Antelope Valley, directly to the north of Los Angeles.

Aerial footage taken on Sunday by a local helicopter tour company appeared to show Dodger stadium surrounded by water—however many social media users questioned whether the parking lot was flooded and speculated that what the video was depicting was actually wet concrete.

Newsweek approached Dodger Aerial, the tour company, and the Los Angeles Dodgers via email for comment on Monday.

Another user posted a clip, purportedly taken in North Hollywood, showing cars stranded in waters reaching up to their headlamps beneath an overpass.

"The river is raging," Jeff Klein wrote alongside a series of videos and stills taken from the bank of the Los Angeles River, showing rapidly flowing water about halfway up the waterway's concrete banks. "For perspective, the water level is probably about halfway or two-thirds up the flood control bank from where it normally is."

The Los Angeles River had not exceeded a foot of water since early May, according to U.S. Geological Survey data, but peaked at nearly ten-feet high on Sunday evening.

The last time it saw similar volumes was in January and February this year, when California was battered by a series of deadly storms that brought severe flooding, leaving thousands of homes without power across the state and leading to thousands of families being evacuated.

A coast-to-coast storm in February then brought further flooding caused by snow melt from mountain regions.

The NWS warned that while the rain was expected to ease off into Monday, with some pockets of heavy rain across parts of Los Angeles and Ventura counties, flooding was expected to continue into the early portion of the week.

Update 08/21/23, 3:55 a.m. ET: This article was updated to include further information throughout.