By Reginald Stanley. Posted February 14, 2019, 10:10 AM.

An atmospheric river event with tropical moisture has resulted in sustained heavy rains perpetually bombarding much of the region overnight Wednesday and Thursday morning, resulting in excessively high rain totals since midnight at some locations.

The Temecula Valley, the foothill communities of De Luz and Fallbrook, and some of the eastern valleys have been particularly hard-hit. Persistent rainfall rates exceeding 0.50 inches per hour have resulted in very high storm totals as of 10 AM Thursday morning. The National Weather Service has issued Flash Flood Warnings to large portions of the Inland Empire and San Diego County through 1145 AM Thursday, also raising concerns of flash flooding near the Santa Margarita River near Camp Pendleton and its tributaries, the San Luis Rey River near Oceanside and upstream communities, as well as the San Diego River in the Fashion Valley district.

WeatherCurrents' longest running station, Temecula, has exceeded 4 inches of rain recorded since midnight. The record maximum daily rainfall for that station is 4.23 inches, which occurred on November 30th, 2007. This is more rain than the amounts recorded in Temecula during the entire 2001-02 and 2006-07 rainy seasons, which season totals were at 3.87 and 3.75 inches, respectively. De Luz, operating since June 2006, also saw its record daily rainfall broken Thursday morning - 4.44 inches as of this writing has eclipsed the old record of 4.06 inches on January 22nd, 2017. This is more than what fell during the entire 2006-07 season there (4.15 inches).

The lowest storm total as of Thursday morning was 0.86 inches in Simi Valley, in stark contrast to the more typical pattern in which Simi Valley often leads storm totals in the WeatherCurrents network. This is likely due to the tropical influx targeting more southerly locations, particularly south of Los Angeles. Rainfall is expected to continue well into Thursday evening.