Southland Bombarded by Hail, Rain From Fast-Moving Storm

A fast-moving storm system hurled a band of thundershowers--and hailstones the size of small peas--across the face of Southern California Thursday afternoon, setting a new record for rainfall at Los Angeles Civic Center and battering homeward-bound traffic at rush hour.

Hail was reported at various locations throughout the Los Angeles Basin, in the San Bernardino Mountains and in the deserts, while brief-but-impressive thunderstorms ranging from light showers to mini-cloudbursts were reported on a storm line that stretched from northern Arizona to the California coast.

Winds gusting to 35 m.p.h. at times hammered at trees and created problems for big-rig truck drivers, while isolated storm cells were said to have dropped as much as a quarter-inch of rain in 30 minutes at various locations.

The California Highway Patrol reported the usual epidemic of minor freeway accidents as the storm caught up with scurrying motorists; two semitrailer trucks were damaged when they skidded and jack-knifed on water-drenched highways in the San Gabriel and San Fernando valleys.

Both the Southern California Edison Co. and the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power began receiving reports of isolated power outages within minutes after the storm began.

Edison spokesman Robert Krauch said that nearly 50,000 of his company’s customers were without power at various times--mostly due to high winds--as the storm moved through the area. DWP spokeswoman Arlene Battle said power was cut to 8,000 customers by lightning strikes.

Baldwin Park police reported some streets flooded and said most traffic lights in their city were knocked out by the storm. Officers were dispatched to major intersections to control traffic until power was restored.

Reports of minor flooding also came from Montebello, Covina and Monrovia.

Police investigated several apparently groundless reports of children and young adults on rafts trapped in the flood-swift waters of the Los Angeles River.

But later in the evening, four men had to be rescued by helicopter when their trailer-mounted, track-laying crane was washed into the Los Angeles River near the 1700 block of North Main Street. Rain caused a portion of the roof to collapse at a Dataproducts warehouse in Canoga Park, damaging 30 to 40 expensive computer printers, and afternoon and evening classes were dismissed when power failed at California State University, Northridge.

Another power failure was reported at Northridge Fashion Center, a major regional shopping complex, but it lasted only about five seconds.

“It was like someone flicking a light off and on--no one panicked,” said Fashion Square spokesman Don Lieberman, who explained that the complex has its own power generator that took over within seconds after the blackout.

Forecasters said it was all because of an autumn storm located on the other side of the Rockies.

Its main effect in Southern California, they explained, was to keep temperatures down and to move the winds and thunderstorms across the landscape.

A total of 1.02 inches of rain fell at the Civic Center--all but .01 of that amount in less than an hour--which set a record for the day. The old record was .42 of an inch, in 1916.

This brought the season total for the Civic Center to 3.17 of an inch, which is nearly three inches above the .19 of an inch that would be statistically normal for this time of year, and 2.78 inches above the amount that had fallen at this time last year.

The downpour in Pasadena was even heavier than in Central Los Angeles: 1.50 inches of rain--and hail--fell there in a little over an hour, according to the weather service.

An amateur observer said he measured .47 of an inch near the Greek Theater, where hailstones nearly half an inch in diameter were found; Lake Arrowhead reported nearly an inch of rain in 40 minutes, with occasional hail; Monrovia had .77 of an inch, and an unofficial observer in Blythe said he measured .79 of an inch of rain in 30 minutes, with small hailstones and winds gusting to 50 m.p.h. and above.

High temperature at the Civic Center Thursday was 73 degrees, with relative humidity between 44% and 81%, and the forecast called for a rise to 76 degrees today, continuing into the lower 80s by Sunday.

By that time, weather service meteorologists said, the storm will have begun to break up and blow away into the Rockies.

Advisory Issued

Meanwhile, the weather system was impressive enough to generate a small-craft advisory for 8- to 11-foot seas and northwest winds 15 to 20 knots in outer coastal waters from Point Conception to Santa Rosa Island.

The weather service said it would be relatively quiet again by this morning, however, with the wind dying to about 14 knots and seas subsiding to seven feet in outer waters and only two- to three-foot seas expected closer inland.

Surf ranged from three to four feet on most beaches Thursday, but the weather service said it should be down to two or three feet today and Saturday.

Times staff writer Thomas Omestad also contributed to this article.