Unusually high tides that have brought flooding to low-lying areas in Southern California including Newport Beach and Long Beach may linger longer than initially predicted.
The National Weather Service on Wednesday extended flood advisories for all of Southern California’s coastal counties through 2 p.m. Friday, said Devin Black, a meteorologist for the weather service’s Oxnard office. They were originally scheduled to expire Thursday at 1 p.m.
Orange and San Diego counties, which were under a more severe flood warning through Thursday afternoon, will be downgraded to a coastal advisory through Friday afternoon.
The weather service has seen reports of “seawater over low-lying areas,” Black said, and “some structures have had shallow water up to the base of the building.”
Long Beach was most acutely affected and has been a main area of concern for the last several weeks, Black said.
Tides are expected to approach 8 feet Thursday morning, then gradually subside into the weekend.
Some tides this week broke records: “They were definitely on the extreme end,” Black said.
The San Pedro tide gauge reached 8.02 feet Monday morning, breaking the previous record of 7.93 feet set in January 2005. Other tide gauges across Southern California approached record levels, including in La Jolla.
Though tides were high across the region, “the angle and magnitude of the swells is a huge factor too,” Black said, so the risk to San Diego and Orange counties was higher as they were more exposed to a southwesterly swell.
The high tides and flooding may be a preview of worse activity this winter, as even higher tides are expected around the Thanksgiving, Christmas and Martin Luther King Jr. Day holidays — the so-called king tides that Californians expect every year.
Looking ahead, a weather system is expected to move over the region Saturday and Sunday, possibly bringing rain to Los Angeles.
Times staff writers Rong-Gong Lin II and Hannah Fry contributed to this report.
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