King Tides Flood Southern California

The story so far

As of October 28, 2026

Southern California’s coast is in a record tide event that has already pushed seawater into streets and neighborhoods and shut parts of key corridors. The tide gauge at Los Angeles Harbor hit 8 feet, 2 inches, setting a new all‑time mark a day after the previous record fell. Newport Beach’s Balboa Peninsula and parts of Long Beach saw harbor water come up through drains and across pavement, and a stretch of Pacific Coast Highway in Sunset Beach flooded. Orange and San Diego counties remain under coastal flood warnings through the morning high tides, with peak levels near 8 feet.

What turned routine high tide into flooding is the stack of factors raising the ocean before any wave reaches shore. The full moon set up the year’s highest “king tides,” while a strong El Niño, a Pacific warming pattern, has heated the water enough to make it expand. An underwater Kelvin wave tied to El Niño has also lifted sea level along the West Coast. Forecasters measured water running roughly 1 to 1.7 feet above the normal tide predictions, which means even modest surf can reach into low‑lying streets and yards. La Jolla’s morning high hit 7.75 feet, near its station record of 7.81.

The story now is less about a single messy morning and more about whether coastal defenses and infrastructure can keep working as these stacked effects persist. Cities moved sand to build temporary berms and handed out sandbags, with Newport Beach reporting about 25,000 taken before the peak. Crews have been pumping out businesses and shoring up weak spots, but closures and slowdowns are spreading beyond beach blocks, including a suspension of Metrolink’s Orange County Line between Laguna Niguel/Mission Viejo and Oceanside. Erosion is ongoing where narrow beaches leave homes, roads and utilities exposed.

Next comes the test of compound flooding. A narrow band of deep Pacific moisture, often called a Pineapple Express, is expected to bring rain over Halloween weekend, on the order of about an inch around Los Angeles with a smaller but real chance of double that in favored hills, while new south and west swells arrive. Even as the highest tides of this cycle ease after Thursday, the ocean will still be running high, so rain, elevated surf and residual water levels could overlap. Forecasters note that the larger king tide windows in November and December usually rise higher than this week, and if they line up with winter storms, impacts would escalate.