People in flood-stricken southern California are bracing themselves for more heavy rain after being drenched for two days.

A winter storm that some weather experts believe was spawned by the El Nino phenomenon has flooded roads and low-lying beach areas.

Since the storm churned out of the Pacific on Friday, more than five inches (12.5 cm) of rain has fallen in the districts around Los Angeles.

Not an ideal place to park your car

Throughout the area, which usually enjoys balmy warm weather with little annual rainfall, warnings are being issued for flash flooding, thunderstorms, high tides and violent surf.

Nearly 100 people were evacuated from two mobile home parks in Huntington Beach when the downpour left some neighborhoods knee-deep in water.

Firefighters used rubber dinghies to bring the residents of the trailer parks to safety. The evacuees had to spend the night in makeshift shelters at local schools.

In the movie star colony of Malibu, residents are trying to prevent possible landslides as rain pounds hillsides bare of vegetation following summer wildfires.

One restaurant on the Malibu coastline has 4-ton boulders bulldozed onto the beach in front of it to protect the building from pounding waves and heavy surf.

The California Highway Patrol (CHP) has closed part of the Pacific Coast Highway in the area, fearing landslides and rockfalls.

More than 360 traffic "incidents" were reported in Los Angeles between midnight Friday and 10 a.m. Saturday. That compares to 45 accidents in the same period a week ago when the roads were dry.

High winds blew trees onto power lines and about 7,000 homes in Los Angeles and the San Fernando Valley were without electricity for several hours early on Saturday.

Meteorological muddle

Local TV stations have for some time been predicting a winter of violent storms as a result of El Nino. In the early eighties, a similar phenomenon caused millions of dollars of damage along the California coast.

Yet there is debate over whether this storm is indeed the work of El Nino, the worldwide weather phenomenon which is triggered by a buildup of warm water off the Pacific coast of South America.

Some meteorologists say it is a normal Pacific storm that would normally hit the Seattle area, but which was driven further south by a dip in the upper-lever jet streams.

Scientists at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, a division of the California Institute of Technology, said recent satellite images show a large warm water mass related to El Nino was receding in the equatorial Pacific Ocean.

"The volume of the warm water related to El Nino has receded to about the level it was in early September," the JPL said in a statement.

But it added that oceanographers noted the phenomenon had completed a "double peak" in the eastern Pacific - a pattern similar to the last major El Nino condition in 1982-3. "This does not mean that El Nino is going away," the JPL said.

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