Southern California - Cycling After the Storm Today (flooding and tornado damage included!)

Out here in Long Beach we got dumped on this morning. 2nd Street in Belmont Shore had some flooding:

http://lh5.ggpht.com/_8HKEZakuboQ/S1ZouLTiGcI/AAAAAAAAdyo/IMZ-6h0yNt0/s800/CIMG8720.JPG

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Ocean Boulevard had lots of flooding as well:

http://lh3.ggpht.com/_8HKEZakuboQ/S1ZqGgOSO5I/AAAAAAAAdz4/mYBtg_evGEI/s800/CIMG8727.JPG

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Lots of people showed up to look at the craziness:

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Belmont Shore:

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Continued

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Despite all of that, it cleared up pretty quickly after dumping, so I was able to get in almost 30 miles of riding. Heading south across the San Gabriel River - that's a lot of water:

http://lh4.ggpht.com/_8HKEZakuboQ/S1ZuRRqU2sI/AAAAAAAAd7g/u4ibKeYL6mg/s800/CIMG8778.JPG

Flooded parking lot at Seal Beach:

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The berm meant to protect against flooding from the sea in Seal Beach apparently also kept the runoff trapped:

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Flooding along PCH kept the southbound lanes closed between Sunset Beach and Huntington Beach - this means I had that stretch all to myself...nice!

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Rough surf around Huntington:

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Bolsa Chica Ecological Reserve looking windy (but nice):

http://lh4.ggpht.com/_8HKEZakuboQ/S1Zuxhe3BEI/AAAAAAAAd-w/Z59J4o8PJC0/s800/CIMG8802.JPG

And ridiculous winds - southbound I was easily doing 20+mph up the little hills. Northbound I was struggling to maintain 13mph on the flats.

Apparently a small tornado hit a shopping and apartment area in Sunset Beach:

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All the news vans were there to cover it:

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Some guy in the apartment complex right behind this had his window broken from the wind. And an SUV with wind damage was being towed away from the area. Crazy.

San Gabriel River Trail flooded in the lower parts. The remains of the flooding:

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Continued

Just a couple of hours previous the water level had been about 3 or 4 feet higher! The trail on higher ground was looking striking by this point though:

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On into downtown Long Beach, where the memorial for Gustavo Ramirez is set up at Shoreline Dr and Shoreline Village Dr:

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Note that there is not supposed to be a lake here:

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A bit of flooding along the beach bike trail:

http://lh3.ggpht.com/_8HKEZakuboQ/S1ZvBem_PHI/AAAAAAAAeCY/BZuEQhZfdO4/s800/CIMG8830.JPG

A gorgeous day though at this point!

http://lh5.ggpht.com/_8HKEZakuboQ/S1ZvDb_VOEI/AAAAAAAAeDA/zk6QvAjl3so/s800/CIMG8834.JPG

Wonder what the next few days will bring.

And here is the full album on picasa with lots of videos of the flooding as well: Picasa Storm Album (http://picasaweb.google.com/rallison/20100119LongBeachStormDay2?feat=directlink). All the photos and videos are geotagged so you can see where the destruction and mayhem occurred.

Dang nice pictures and commentary!
I'm from Thousand Oaks and i thought it was bad here! There were little floods but not as bad as Long Beach
props to you for going out riding also after the storm subsided. i think i'll wait til the weather clears!

That PCH underpass is always under water during high tide, so it's not particularly surprising that it would be under water in this storm today.

...and the rain is back here in Long Beach...

Thanks for sharing your pics!! I was lucky enough to ride around LB before the storm hit. Sure looks different after the down pour!!

Really nice pics! We had some damage in the form of a downed powerline.

http://i46.photobucket.com/albums/f140/michsis/topstorm.jpg

Was all that debris on the road a problem or was it easy enough to avoid? I want to go for a ride but I'm kind of worried all that stuff would destroy my tires.

For the most part, debris was not a huge problem. I still had to keep my eyes open and ride around a lot of junk on the road (and barely missed a small nail/tack). Of course, I also run Michelin Krylions and they can take a lot of abuse.