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OK, It's No Polar Vortex But The Weather Outside In SoCal Is Still Frightful

A large pine tree struck a Santa Barbara home Saturday during a powerful winter storm. (Photo courtesy Santa Barbara County Fire)
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Admittedly, most of us would take the steady wind and rain we're experiencing this weekend over wind chills in the negative double digitsthat hit the Midwest this week.

That said, this stormy weather in Southern California is pretty nasty: Flash flood warnings, road closures, high surf, rainfall already as high as 5 inches in 24 hours in some locations, mud and debris flows in burn scar areas, mandatory evacuations in Malibu.

Conditions are bad enough for the City of Malibu to cancel a meeting of the Disaster Response and Recovery committee.

The National Weather Service has a whole page on the region's "excessive rainfall forecasts."

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Here's the view from space:

And this from noon:

Stu Ostro, who is a senior meteorologist with the Weather Channel, shared this cheery animation:

And local weather experts are warning there's more to come:

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In Los Angeles County, the California Highway Patrol's twitter thread is basically one long Sigalert.

A volunteer member of Ventura County Sheriff's search and rescue team was struck and killed Saturday while helping people at the scene of a traffic collision. Sheriff's officials identified the man killed as Jeff Dye. Authorities also said other personnel were injured.

Santa Barbara County Fire-Public Information Officer Mike Eliason has been keeping followers up-to-date on the scene there:

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The Los Angeles Police Department is reminding anyone who does hit the road to exercise a whole lot of caution:

Because you don't want to run into road conditions like these:

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Read more about the storm: One Rescue Worker Dead And Evacuations Underway As Storm Hits SoCal

UPDATES:

1 p.m.: This article was updated with the identity of the Ventura County Sheriff Department volunteer who was killed and some additional details about overall weather conditions.

This article was originally published at 12:20 p.m..

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