Storm Is Light on Showers, Heavy on Hail

Hail buffeted Santa Ana on Monday as a storm slid across Southern California with a little more enthusiasm than expected, bringing surprise showers, thunder and lightning.

Cpl. Cliff Seward of the Santa Ana Police Department said the late afternoon shower of hail, “about the size of rock salt,” was “coming down pretty hard, but it didn’t last very long.”

The storm, which brought only 0.15 of inch of rain in Orange County, did cause freeway fender-benders and other minor accidents, California Highway Patrol spokesman Glen Davis said.

The storm also caused Caltrans to abandon plans to close all northbound lanes of the San Diego Freeway Monday night. The shutdown was to allow crews to place K-rails, the concrete barriers that separate traffic from construction work. The freeway is being widened to accommodate a new car pool lane.

John Wayne Airport was closed for the night when the storm caused runway lights to go out at 6:45 p.m. saidairport spokeswoman Kathie Rutherford. (Story in Part I, Page I.)

Should Be Gone

Meteorologist Rick Dittman of WeatherData Inc., which supplies weather reports for The Times, said the quick-moving storm should have cleared Southern California by late Monday, leaving sunny but cool weather today. Daytime highs in Orange County should reach the low 60s, Dittman said.

With a dry northwest flow aloft beginning late Monday night, the weather service said gusty west to northwest winds could be expected over the mountains and deserts for the next several days.

Although forecasters had predicted no more than partly cloudy skies and a “slight chance” of showers over the mountains, the system proved fairly wet and mean-tempered as it moved through the Los Angeles Basin and on toward the southern deserts.

“What happened was it developed and intensified a little quicker and more impressively than I thought,” Dittman said. “That was just enough to take the moisture that was available and turn it into a few showers and thundershowers.”

Hail also fell in Santa Monica and several other locations. Thunder was heard over the San Fernando Valley and elsewhere.

In Manhattan Beach, two women escaped injury when lightning struck a rooftop television antenna, traveling through plumbing to blow out a window and blow holes in both sides of the house.

Shortly after noon Monday, Esther McDermott, 78, and Lee Goodwin, 76, were in Goodwin’s home in the 900 block of 1st Street, when a lightning bolt hit the 15-foot-tall TV antenna attached to a sewer vent on the roof.

Manhattan Beach Fire Capt. Steve Dixon said the bolt apparently followed piping down through the walls, shattering a bathroom window and blowing holes in the stucco on both sides of the house. “It was really bizarre,” Dixon said.

McDermott and Goodwin, who were not hurt, said they first heard loud thunder, then a “crack.” Goodwin said she at first had no idea what had happened, adding, “It shook it (the house) up.”