Santa Blows In on Blast of Icy Air and Snow

Santa blew into town on a blast of icy air from the north, making his rounds on a Christmas Eve when the snow level threatened to drop below 2,000 feet and cold rains drenched Southern California.

As families gathered around fireplaces and homeless men in plastic bags huddled over trash fires on Skid Row, forecasters said that brisk breezes should make today feel colder than the predicted temperature in the upper 40s and low 50s.

The cold was blamed for a power outage that stranded about 150 people at the wrong end of the Palm Springs Aerial Tramway for two hours late Saturday afternoon.

One of the tramway’s two cars was halfway down Mt. San Jacinto when a battery died, but workers brought the 80-passenger cabin back to the upper station using auxiliary power supplies and management treated everybody to free food and soft drinks.

“It’s a different way to spend Christmas Eve,” said Nancy Farr of Los Angeles, one of the stranded tram riders.

Holiday Outlook

The chance of showers and thunderstorms was put at 70% today, with partly cloudy skies otherwise and gusty southwest to west winds as strong as 25 m.p.h.

This could translate into a wind chill factor in the low 20s.

“A low-pressure system made landfall in Northern California, and in association with the jet stream it’s bringing air from very cold origins, which is unusual for the season,” said Rick Dittmann of WeatherData Inc., a firm that provides forecasts for The Times.

“It’s going to be very uncomfortable tomorrow and Monday,” said Dittmann.

Cold winds from the icy reaches of the northern United States and Canada brought Saturday’s high down to 52 degrees, well below the normal high for Dec. 24 of 67 degrees.

The drop in temperatures was a gift for skiers and resort operators in Southern California mountains, where rain started turning to snow at about 4 p.m. Saturday.

“It’s very close to ideal conditions, and if we have a white Christmas then all the ski areas are able to open all their lifts,” said Benno Nager, general manager of the Snow Summit ski resort in Big Bear Lake.

But getting to the slopes may pose a problem, as snow levels are expected to go as low as 1,000 feet, with some foothill suburbs experiencing a brief but genuine white Christmas, the National Weather Service said.

A foot of snow or more is expected at higher elevations by Monday, with gusty winds blowing it across roads. “Mountain travel . . . will become very difficult if not dangerous,” National Weather Service forecaster Bob Grebe said.

Rock and mud slides were also reported in Topanga Canyon and other areas prone to flooding.

Nothing daunted skiers such as Rachael Mudgett, a Navy nursing student from San Diego, who said she left early Saturday and ran into rain only after arriving on the slopes. “The snow is kind of wet, but it’s not too bad,” she said. “I’m from Minnesota originally and I’m used to skiing on ice.”

Surfers, too, were cheered by the weather, with six- to eight-foot breakers expected and some sets of waves reaching as high as 12 feet.

The weather service also warned that clearing skies on Monday are likely to drop the temperatures even lower, threatening frost-sensitive crops with lows of 23 or 24 degrees.

In addition to snow in the mountains, rain and fog slowed pre-holiday traffic throughout the Southland, especially along the Grapevine, a stretch of Interstate 5 leading north into the San Joaquin Valley, through the Cajon Pass on Interstate 15 and on I-10 from the San Bernardino Valley to Palm Springs.

While the weekend storm brought the area’s rainfall up to 3.9 inches, which is about normal for the season, Dittmann said it is too early to declare an end to the drought in Southern California.

“Recent storms dropped a lot of snow in the Sierra, which is very important, but a high-pressure system could build like last year, and if there’s no snow for three or four months then there’s still a big problem,” he said. “We’re coming off two dry years, so we need a good wet year to get things up to normal. This is a good start.”

Elsewhere in the state, four inches of rain fell in the mountains near San Simeon, Calif., and street and highway flooding was reported in San Luis Obispo.

Winds of 55 m.p.h. whipped the waves at Half Moon Bay on the central coast and snow fell as low as 300 feet above sea level in the Sacramento region.