Thunderstorms Slam State With Rain, Winds, Hail

A fast-moving Pacific storm hurled a barrage of brief and violent thunderstorms across the face of California Monday, hammering the Southland with a combined fury of thunder, lightning, wind, hail and heavy surf--and setting off a new epidemic of flash-flood warnings to the north.

Fire-denuded hillsides of western Ventura and eastern Santa Barbara counties, where up to two inches of rain fell Sunday night and Monday morning, survived the deluge virtually intact despite gloomy predictions.

But a drenched and sagging hillside in Mandeville Canyon forced evacuation of one expensive home directly below and threatened two others, while property owners along west-facing beaches did their best to prepare for incoming surf expected to reach 13 feet or more.

In Orange County, which had soaked up a little over an inch of rain by Monday afternoon, the storm’s damage was limited to a few fender-benders.

“It’s been very kind to us,” said Officer Matt Clark of the California Highway Patrol in Santa Ana. “We’ve only had a few accidents, and they’ve been basically non-injury, property damage kind of things.”

The weather proved to be too much for a few good men at the El Toro Marine Corps Air Station, though, where 110 drill team and drum and bugle corpsmen moved their Battle Color Ceremony off the review field and into a hangar in deference to the downpour. (Picture on Page 2.) A ceremony scheduled later at Irvine High School was canceled.

Northern and Central California took the hard edge of the storm:

Flash-flood watches were posted from Eureka to Sacramento to Morro Bay during the day, and winter storm warnings were in effect for the Sierra, where the snow level was expected to drop below 3,000 feet at some points overnight.

Good, Bad News

“Great for the ski resorts, but not so hot if you have to go driving,” said California Highway Patrol spokesman Don McDonald, who added his agency’s voice to National Weather Service warnings of high wind and blowing snow that could make any kind of driving hazardous for the next day or so.

There were reports of tornado funnels in the sky off Point Sur and in the San Joaquin Valley. Few--if any--of the funnels were believed to have touched the earth, but the threat was enough to paralyze traffic in several places, the CHP said.

By late evening, however, rainfall from the storm was only a minor fraction of the disastrous amounts that fell on the north in the last part of February, and the state Flood Control Operations Center reported that runoff appeared to be “containable for the time being.”

Southland Condition

Southern California, too, appeared to have survived the first onslaught without major disaster.

By 4 p.m. in Orange County, the heaviest rainfall was in the south. San Juan Capistrano had 1.20 inches of rain, while Santa Ana had only .83 of an inch and El Toro just .34 of an inch.

The total by that hour at Los Angeles Civic Center was .82 of an inch, bringing the total for the season to 14.17 inches--nearly three inches more than had fallen at this time last year and a little more than two inches above the 11.92-inch mark that would be normal by now.

Other places were wetter: Mt. Wilson recorded a drenching 2.09 inches for the storm’s first few hours, while Torrance had 1.45 inches, Avalon received 1.25, Fallbrook had 1.17, Montebello had 1.11--and 1.09 fell at Los Angeles International Airport.

Rain was only partially responsible for the sliding hillside in Mandeville Canyon, Los Angeles City Fire Department spokesman Greg Acevedo said.

He explained that someone had evidently left sprinklers running for about three days on a hillside below a home in the 1900 block of Westridge Road, which left the earth saturated and ready to move when the rains came.

House Evacuated

Firefighters turned the sprinklers off, but by 9 a.m., mud and rocks were beginning to slide, and the Fire Department ordered evacuation of a house directly below at 1971 Mandeville Canyon Road and warned residents of two nearby homes that they might have to get out, too.

Small-craft warnings were in effect for the entire coastline from San Francisco Bay to the Mexican border and meteorologists said there could be some damage to beaches from incoming surf during the next day or so, but they largely discounted the chance of coastal flooding, explaining that tides will be only about five feet high.

The surf at Newport and Huntington beaches was forecast to be slightly tamer than elsewhere in the Southland, increasing to eight feet, perhaps reaching as high as 13 feet in some areas, with the heaviest surf forecast for west-facing beaches.

Body Discovered

Police who had been searching the Los Angeles River for a 12-year-old boy who fell into the rain-swollen channel north of Central Los Angeles during Saturday’s rainstorm said a body that appeared to be that of a young boy was recovered by Long Beach. The body was later identified by the parents as that of Jose Guadalupe Grajeda of East Los Angeles, the coroner’s office said.

Weather service meteorologists said Southern California’s siege of bad weather was all because of a wandering wall of high atmospheric pressure.

When that high-pressure zone is in place along the southern coast of California--as it is most of the time--storms rolling in from the Pacific are deflected northward to Central and Northern California.

But when the high-pressure area slips southward or breaks up--as it has just now--the southern coast is open to the incoming weather systems and they come marching in from the ocean in waves until the protective pressure wall is rebuilt.

Trouble is, no one seemed to know Monday just how soon that might be.

The high temperature Monday was 64 degrees in Newport Beach, 60 in San Juan Capistrano and El Toro and 63 in Santa Ana. Temperatures today were not expected to climb above 59, with a 30% chance of rain overnight and today.

What’s more, the long-range forecast calls for the weather to remain “unsettled” through the rest of the week. Another storm is already gathering strength north of Hawaii, according to satellite pictures, and can be expected to arrive in the Southland by late tonight or early Wednesday.