By Reginald Stanley. Posted August 20, 2014, 8:37 AM.

A low pressure system off the Baja California coast is responsible for the thunderstorms that reached Southern California shortly after 1 AM Wednesday morning, and have continued since then.

High clouds first appeared Tuesday afternoon in a diagonal SW-NE line, extending roughly from the San Diego County coastline northeast to the San Bernardino Mountains. Thunderstorms did not begin to form until approximately 1:15 AM. This line of thunderstorms stretched across Camp Pendleton, the communities of Fallbrook and De Luz, as well as the Temecula, Menifee and Perris valleys.

Thunder, lightning and rain were first reported around 1:20 AM in Murrieta and Wildomar. The De Luz weather station had experienced a power failure shortly before this, presumably due to the same thunderstorm activity. Some of these same cells had later moved on to Menifee and Hemet to the northeast, and as far as Beaumont. French Valley and Temecula were also affected. Several minutes of heavy rain and hail were reported in Wildomar at 1:40 AM, near Interstate 15 and Clinton Keith Road.

A number of WeatherCurrents stations recorded nearly identical precipitation totals by Wednesday morning, those that were in the same "line of fire" include De Luz with 0.33" , Reginald Stanley in Southeast Wildomar who also recorded 0.33" , as well as Fallbrook, Northwest Murrieta, and French Valley which all recorded amounts of 0.34" . East Hemet recorded the highest amount, with 0.38" . Other stations recorded lower but still notable amounts, such as Beaumont (Cherry Valley), Perris, Menifee (Sun City), South Temecula and Wildomar.

WeatherCurrents stations in Lake Elsinore, Jurupa Valley, Moreno Valley, Riverside, San Bernardino, Simi Valley, and San Diego did not record enough to measure. Anza is currently experiencing a station outage there.

Thunderstorms remain a possibility in the Inland Empire throughout the day Wednesday, and into Thursday morning.