A surfboard on Balboa Boulevard, and a cardboard plea to slow down
KTLA 5's Sky5 helicopter, with Rich Prickett reporting, followed seawater over the sand berms and into Newport Beach garages.
KTLA 5
Story of Why this story? The video opened at a pace of 366,213 views a day, 27 times a normal first day on this channel (13,582).
SKY5 LIVE: High tide causes flooding along SoCal coast
Sand berms gave way first. About twelve minutes into KTLA 5's live helicopter feed, the barriers built along the Balboa Peninsula breach, and seawater runs through the gaps toward street level. A few minutes later the camera finds where it went: front yards, driveways, open garages along West Balboa Boulevard.
The broadcast runs close to twenty minutes and stays mostly over Newport Beach. Waves slam into sea walls and beachfront homes, some of them behind wooden barricades and sandbags. City crews run pumping hoses through flooded residential streets. One resident paddles down a road on a surfboard. Another wades through deep water holding a handwritten cardboard sign asking drivers to turn and slow down, because their wakes are pushing water into the houses.
"Fortunately, we're not hearing about any reports of injury," Sky5's Rich Prickett tells anchors Omar and Lauren. He also warns that after low tide around 3:00, the water was expected to rise again at about 9 p.m.
About 177,000 people watched in the first eight hours, while a longer KTLA video usually draws around 13,600 in a whole first day. Kaj Goldberg's report linking the coastal flooding to rain from Tropical Storm Rachel also started quickly, though well behind the helicopter feed. The station followed up with Newport Beach's local emergency and the waves that broke apart sections of the Long Beach Peninsula boardwalk.
In the comments, viewers mostly want to know exactly where they are looking: one asks whether the break near the harbor inlet is the Wedge, and another asks why San Diego seems to have been spared.
Published on Trari
Where next?
What viewers say
Thank you for the gps location and great coverage SKY5 Crew!
@jeangreen432See it on YouTubeHang tough, Long Beach. We know you will. 🫡
@chopprzSee it on YouTube4:56 Is the center of the picture the surfing wave area called the "Wedge?"
@sanfranciscobaySee it on YouTube
Public comments from the video's page on YouTube
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- Channel
- KTLA 5
- Subscribers
- 1,510,000
- Channel views, last 7 days
- 12,978,036
- Channel views, pace per day
- 1,240,562 (on a normal day: 2,077,726)
- Video published
- October 9, 2026
- Video views so far
- 176,664 (less than a day online)
- Video views, pace per day
- 366,213
The numbers
For a local station that usually measures a first day in the low tens of thousands, this aerial feed started in a different league.
💡 Test your knowledge
Since which year has KTLA 5 been serving Southern California?
KTLA's own channel description says it has served Southern California since 1947.