Michael Gessl’s house survived the Palisades fire that destroyed much of his neighborhood, but something else is making him nervous.
Rain.
There is, at last, precipitation in the forecast for this weekend. And Gessl worries about water seeping through his skylight, which was removed during the firefight. He’s holding it in place, for now, with rocks.
“I don’t want all the contents of my house to get wet and soggy,” said Gessl, 75, who never evacuated and has been hunkered down inside his cold, dark Pacific Palisades house since the fire started on Jan. 7.
He is keeping a close watch on the charred hillside behind his home, hoping old tree roots keep it from sliding when it gets wet.
About 40 miles south, Marianne Hunter dreads the rain because of an another ongoing disaster: the landslides on the Palos Verdes Peninsula.
A section of Dauntless and Exultant Drives is closed due to the ongoing landslide and work to continue to repave the streets and fix the water lines in the Portuguese Bend neighborhood in Palos Verdes on June 21, 2024. According to a resident, two of the homes in the neighborhood have been red tagged.
(Genaro Molina / Los Angeles Times)
Such is the paradox of Los Angeles County this winter: It is dangerously dry. But recent disasters — the Palisades, Eaton and Hughes fires and the peninsula landslides — have made people fear the effects of rain they know they desperately need.
If the rain doesn’t come, the fire danger will increase. If it comes too fast, it could trigger mudslides and toxic runoff in the burn scars, and it could accelerate movement on the Palos Verdes Peninsula.
There, back-to-back wet winters triggered last year’s extreme land movement that warped roads, cracked houses and transformed landscapes. With the lubricated ground shifting, at times, nine to 12 inches a week, utility companies shut off electricity, gas and internet for hundreds of homes.
“L.A. needs the rain, obviously. All of Southern California does. However, rain here in any excessive amount is a problem,” said Hunter, 75, whose house in Rancho Palos Verdes has not had heating since the gas was shut off last summer.
Michael Anderson, the state climatologist for the California Department of Water Resources, calls it a “kind of uneasy dichotomy — we need the rain, but we’d really like it to come in as an overly friendly marine layer.”
Most of Los Angeles County is in a severe drought, according to the U.S. Drought Monitor.
From Oct. 1 through Dec. 31, the county logged 0.19 inches of rain, Anderson said. In a typical year, 4.35 inches falls during that time.
Even if this weekend’s storms, which are predicted to be mild, bring an inch of rain, January would be the fifth driest since record keeping began in 1896, Anderson said.
The current dry spell comes after the back-to-back wet winters of 2023 and 2024. Atmospheric rivers pummeled the Southland with record-breaking rainfall that brought lush vegetation — which dried out and became combustible last summer when intense heat also shattered records.
“You’re really kind of piling extreme on extreme here,” Anderson said.
A small amount of rain is forecast for the region this weekend, most likely between Saturday afternoon and Monday evening, said Mike Wofford, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Oxnard.
A half-inch of rain or less is expected across most of the county, but precipitation totals could be up to 1.5 inches in the eastern San Gabriel Mountains.
Because the rain is expected to be light, the risk of debris flow in burned areas is low, Wofford said. But there is a small chance a thunderstorm could emerge directly over a burn scar — a worst-case scenario that could cause problems.
Mayor Karen Bass issued an emergency executive order Tuesday to shore up Los Angeles burn areas and protect watersheds ahead of potential rain.
Mudslides damaged both lanes of Mulholland Drive in February 2024 during a very wet rainy season.
(Brian van der Brug / Los Angeles Times)
She directed city crews to clear and remove vegetation, reinforce hillsides and roads and clear debris. The city will install reinforced concrete barriers and sandbags to buttress affected areas and stem the flow of toxins, according to the mayor’s office.
The city also will work to divert stormwater into the sewer system to prevent fire-contaminated runoff from flowing directly into the ocean.
In Pasadena and the neighboring, unincorporated community of Altadena, the Eaton fire burned more than two feet into the hillsides, “so there is no root system left” to hold soil and debris, said Lisa Derderian, a spokeswoman for the city of Pasadena.
“We are concerned for even the lightest rain” in burned foothills areas, Derderian wrote in an email, adding that “it’ll be several years of heightened awareness and preparedness every time we get rain [and] wind.”
Officials will be distributing thousands of pre-filled sandbags in the coming days, she said.
Elizabeth Richey, a 59-year-old landscape designer, has been watching the forecast with growing alarm.
Her rented home in Altadena burned in the Eaton fire. For two weeks, it was off limits, blocked off by local authorities and the National Guard.
When Richey returned for the first time this week, she salvaged a few personal treasures from her blackened garden: Her grandmother’s flower pot. Her mother’s stone Buddha statues. Some vintage, colorful glass fishing balls and wrought-iron furniture.
A fallen street sign and destroyed homes on Marathon Road in Altadena on Jan. 14.
(Myung J. Chun / Los Angeles Times)
“Its beautiful stuff, all charred, but still there,” she said, adding: “The rain brings an urgency to getting the stuff out before its becomes a soupy mess.”
Richey had checked the garden but had not yet scoured the wreckage of the house, because she did not have proper protective gear.
She left early the night of Jan. 7 because she was initially worried about wind, not fire. On her way out, she grabbed one photo of her late mother sitting in a field of poppies — but nothing else.
“I’m still in shock about everything that I’ve lost. Four generations of memorabilia, all my kids memories: gone,” said Richey, who has two adult children.
Richey was desperate to comb through the house — before it gets wet.
On the landslide-plagued Palos Verdes Peninsula, Hunter said she hoped for a gentle weekend rain, not an inundation that would cause the ground to slip farther and her community’s problems to escalate once again.
Her house in the hard-hit Portuguese Bend neighborhood has just minor cracks from land movement, but the last year has been challenging.
She said she and her husband made “a huge investment” for solar power for their house after the electricity was cut off. With no gas, they sporadically use a fireplace to stay warm.
The telephone landline was disabled. And thus, so was her husband’s pacemaker monitor, which was connected to it.
In recent weeks, the land movement in Rancho Palos Verdes has slowed.
Local officials credit the dry winter and several newly installed deep de-watering wells, which have pumped out millions of gallons of groundwater that drives the area’s landslide movement.
But as worried as she is about too much water, Hunter is equally concerned about fire.
“We have a lot of foliage, a lot of trees … a lot of dry brush,” she said. “So, there’s good in every bad. And vice versa.”
