San Diego floods

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Winter storms for relatively dry San Diego are hit-or-miss, but mostly miss, so the wallop of a Pacific front Monday stunned California's second-largest city even as it was expecting rain.

It was the third of three Pacific storms to strike the West Coast since Friday, with the first bypassing the region and the second producing only about one-third of an inch of relatively warm rain. A city that walked it off was then punished by the third storm, which had been forecast to be stronger.

It was the wettest January day on record in San Diego, the National Weather Service said. A high school in the city was being used as a temporary shelter after about 100 homes were in some way affected by the flooding, according to Mayor Todd Gloria, who declared a state of emergency "due to extreme rainfall and flash flooding."

Video posted to social media showed cars being swept away by fast-moving waters, on roads turned into rivers.

Tijuana and other parts of northern Baja California were hit hard. At least eight migrants were rescued by U.S. Customs and Border Protection agents and San Diego Fire Department rescuers when they were endangered by the floodwaters of the Tijuana River Valley on the U.S. side, authorities said.

Residents in the Southcrest neighborhood just southeast of downtown had to be rescued by firefighters as standing water quickly surrounded their apartment complex, according to authorities and coverage from NBC San Diego. No injuries were reported.

Navy Base San Diego, south of downtown, reported flooding in the late morning as a thick cell of precipitation moved over the area and put multiple streets and Interstate 15, which leads to Las Vegas, under enough water that they were effectively shuttered.

Navy officials said personnel on base should shelter in place as they tried to move incoming and outgoing traffic to areas of the base that weren't temporarily united with adjacent San Diego Bay.

Mayor Gloria urged residents and visitors to stay off roads Monday. Schools in adjacent La Mesa and Spring Valley declared classrooms would be closed Tuesday.

"This weather event was predicted, in terms of rain, but the amount of rain in the short amount of time was a bit of a surprise to, I think, everybody," he said at a news conference early Tuesday at Lincoln High School in San Diego, which is being used as a shelter.

Monday's storm spun at the coast counterclockwise and hit northern Baja California, giving San Diego a glancing but still strong blow, NWS meteorologist Brandt Maxwell said.

The long-tail jet stream, a permanent feature that usually aims storms much farther north, and the strong atmospheric river paired up with unstable air composed of warmer atmosphere colliding with colder climes, Maxwell said. Together those elements charged up the day's storm.

The only thing missing, Maxwell noted, was strong wind.

San Diego's rain amounts have been well below normal this season, which started Oct. 1. But this single storm brought the city to slightly above normal for the year, Maxwell said.