Sven Dybdahl, owner of olive oil and vinegar store Viva Oliva in downtown Santa Barbara, said he had trouble finding dry routes to work Thursday morning, but most of the heavy rains and flooding had receded shortly before 11 a.m. By midday, the rain and wind had eased and residents ventured outside to look at the damage. Later in the morning, streets began filling with water in parts of Santa Barbara as the storm delivered another deluge. The deluge prompted flash flooding in Ventura County around 1:30 a.m., the weather service said. The downpours targeted Ventura and Santa Barbara counties northwest of Los Angeles County overnight, swamping areas in the cities of Port Hueneme, Oxnard and Santa Barbara, where a police detective carried a woman on his back after the SUV she was riding in got stuck in knee-deep floodwaters.īetween midnight and 1 a.m., the storm dumped 3.18 inches of rainfall in downtown Oxnard, surpassing the area’s average of 2.56 inches for the entire month of December, according to the National Weather Service.
Motorists were stranded in their vehicles on flooded roadways in typically idyllic Santa Barbara on Thursday, while nearby Oxnard got a month’s worth of rain in a single hour in a storm that pummeled Southern California while Christmas travel got underway. A pedestrian walks under a flooded freeway underpass during a rainstorm, Thursday, Dec.