UPDATE: Hazardous Weather Warning Issued

7/31 UPDATE 8 p.m.: Flood watch cancelled.

7/31 UPDATE: At 4 p.m. Sunday, the National Weather Service issued a "Hazardous Weather Outlook" for all the extreme Southwestern portion of the state, including the Inland Empire; coastal areas in Orange and San Diego counties; as well as mountain and desert areas across the Southland.

Scattered showers and thunderstorms will see periods of “deadly lightning,” and isolated strong storms will produce torrential rain, hail and strong winds through the evening, according to the National Weather Service.  

A flash flood watch remains in effect through this evening for the mountains and deserts in Riverside, San Diego and San Bernardino counties.

The monsoonal moisture will continue through Monday with the flash flood warning remaining in effect.

7/31 ORIGINAL POST: The scattered thunderstorms that hit the region this morning and flooded a restaurant in Perris are expected to ease by this afternoon, a spokeswoman for the National Weather Service said.

"The storms will be mostly moving northward out of Riverside County by this afternoon and into San Bernardino County,'' said Tina Stall of the weather service. "We still have some light rain in the area, but there are no reports of flooding. We may have some isolated storms pop up on and off later, but we don't expect anything heavy.''

The California Highway Patrol on its website reported at 9:19 a.m. that runoff from Interstate 215 flooded a restaurant on Fourth Street in Perris. Caltrans work on the freeway caused the water to not run off properly and resulted in flooding, the CHP said.

The NWS website said doppler radar continued to depict widespread
showers and isolated thunderstorms over much of northern Riverside County and western San Bernardino County with rainfall locally heavy in the higher terrain and high deserts.

Earlier, a thunderstorm fueled by monsoonal moisture was violent enough to awaken some Palm Springs residents about 4 a.m. today. Rain has continued to fall throughout the day with a total .26 inches reported at Palm Springs International Airport as of about 11:30 a.m., AccuWeather reported.

The storm has left about 2,000 Coachella Valley residents without power, a Southern California Edison spokesman said. Calls of flickering lights and outages have been coming largely from the Palm Springs, Thousand Palms, Desert Hot Springs and Twentynine Palms areas, he said.

The storm was also to blame for the Palm Springs Aerial Tramway not operating this morning. It came on the heels of widespread thunderstorms, including some flooding, over the mountains and inland areas on Saturday afternoon.

A flash flood watch remained in effect for the mountain and desert areas through this evening. This means conditions may develop that lead to a flash flood, according to the NWS.

The storms and other weather conditions have been caused by a high-pressure system over the region that is drawing in tropical moisture from the south as it rotates clockwise, the NWS said. --City News Service