Snow Pelts 500-Mile Strip From Sierra to Grapevine : Big Chill in L.A.--Rain to Linger

Winter’s first bad storm, sweeping down from western Canada, laid a 500-mile blanket of snow up to three feet deep from the Sierra Nevada to the Grapevine and covered Los Angeles and the rest of California with rain and unseasonably cold temperatures today.

A steady downpour most of Sunday night dropped .81 of an inch on Los Angeles, and the temperature early today fell to 49 degrees, said Betty Reo, weather service specialist of the National Weather Service in Los Angeles.

Forecasters were predicting more thundershowers tonight in Los Angeles and the San Fernando, San Gabriel and San Bernardino valleys, with a gradual easing to partly cloudy Tuesday. It is also expected to be a little warmer Tuesday.

An unidentified woman about 20 years old was killed this morning in a pileup of two cars, a pickup truck and a truck-and-trailer rig on the eastbound Pomona Freeway near Hacienda Boulevard in Hacienda Heights.

Scores of Accidents

The rain-slicked roads also caused scores of minor accidents, the CHP reported. At one point Sunday night, there were 10 minor collisions in 20 minutes.

As temperatures plummeted to the 20s and snow reduced visibility to a few feet, three hikers from a youth group were lost Sunday night in the San Gabriel Mountains, but 30 searchers who went out looking for them found them early today, the sheriff’s department said.

The three hikers, Susan Ashcroft, 17, Marnie Bradley, 17, and Jack Hawkins, 24, all of Fullerton, were found cold and exhausted, sheltering in a drainage ditch, a mile from the Angeles Crest Highway, Deputy Sam Jones said.

Fifteen inches of snow were dumped on Reno, Nev., the heaviest fall since Christmas, 1971, and only two inches short of the record of 17 inches set in a 1952 blizzard, said Lee Baca, meteorologist of the National Weather Service in Redwood City, Calif.

More than three feet of snow had fallen over most of the Northern and Central Sierra Nevada by this morning and it was still coming down, closing a number of passes and making tire chains mandatory on others.

Interstate 80, over Donner Pass, was closed indefinitely, said Barbara Carballo, a Nevada Highway Patrol dispatcher.

Tioga Pass Closed

Tioga Pass into Yosemite and Carson Pass on Highway 88 were also closed, and chains were mandatory on vehicles traveling over several other passes in Northern California, Carballo said.

“Even the roads that are open are slick with ice, and there have been dozens of minor accidents,” Carballo said.

In Southern California, snow closed Tejon Pass on Interstate 5 for three hours this morning, delaying drivers of 100 cars before it was reopened at 10 a.m., CHP Officer Michael Kerr said.

In Southern California’s high desert, snow fell as low as 2,000 feet, and in Barstow it was coming down heavily this morning. Chains were required on Interstate 40 between Barstow and Newberry Springs.

The snow reduced visibility in the Mojave Desert near Edwards Air Force Base, 60 miles north of Los Angeles, slowing traffic on Highways 14 and 58 to less than 10 miles an hour.