The 5 Craziest Things About The California Floods

In many parts of the country, a July afternoon thunderstorm is about as commonplace as a crowded neighborhood swimming pool or a long line of children at an ice cream truck.

But things are a little different in Southern California. Rainfall is extremely rare this time of year, and although it's desperately needed, the tropical moisture that fell came way too fast. As a result, our experts were astonished at some of the things they saw from this rain event.

(MORE: Latest News on the Southwestern Floods | Forecast)

Below, we recap the 5 wildest things we saw in California over the weekend.

1. July rainfall records shattered in a matter of days

In the first 19 days of this month, San Diego has received 1.69 inches of rain in July. If you combine the 101 months of July from 1914 to 2014, the city received 1.68 inches of rain in that span.

Los Angeles is also rewriting the record books. The downtown area has recorded 0.38 inches of rain this month, which tops the combined rainfall for all July days from 1987 to 2014.

A few other notables:

• Lancaster, California: Two wettest July days since 1948 were both in the last week (1.59 inches on Sunday and 0.72 inches on Saturday, though Saturday's total is tied with July 12, 1999 for second)
• Paso Robles, California: 2.09 inches of rain Sunday nearly quadrupled the city's previous wettest July day on record – 0.58 inches on July 9, 1950. Paso Robles' 2.17 inches of rain so far this month is equal to the 12 previous wettest Julys combined.

2. Wildfire jumps a highway, then flooding occurs less than 48 hours later

If there's a silver lining from all that "weather whiplash," the heavy rains worked wonders on fire containment, and the so-called North fire is not expected to spread much further, according to the Press-Enterprise.

3. A pair of unlikely Major League Baseball rainouts

Baseball fans were surprised to see that San Diego's Petco Park actually owns a tarp to cover the Padres infield in the event of a rain delay, but that was confirmed Sunday afternoon when the rains came and the team's grounds crew was put to work. The Padres-Rockies game became San Diego's first home rainout since 2006.

In Anaheim, the Angels were scheduled to play the Boston Red Sox Sunday night, but the heavy rains washed out that game, too. It was the first time in 20 years that an Anaheim home game was rained out.

4. Interstate 10 washed out and shut down

Drivers going between Southern California and Arizona will be forced to drive hundreds of miles out of the way for an indefinite period of time after floodwaters washed out a portion of Interstate 10 Sunday afternoon. One driver was injured and countless others were stranded in the incident, and officials said it will likely be days before the important artery can be reopened.

5. Beaches evacuated and closed because of lightning

One year ago, a small storm created a cluster of lightning strikes over Venice Beach in Los Angeles, one of which killed a 20-year-old man. Meteorologists were stunned that a summer storm could turn deadly in Southern California in the month of July, but a year later, storms yet again appeared over SoCal beaches and forced lifeguards to evacuate several beaches.

This time, authorities weren't taking any chances, and they closed all Los Angeles County beaches twice Saturday due to lightning strikes in the area, according to KTLA.com.