Storm Thunders In Like an Invasion, but It’s All for Show--Little Rain Falls

A storm arrived along the Southern California coast before dawn Monday with a show of thunder and lightning in beach areas, but only scattered showers in inland areas and a sprinkling of snow at some local mountain resorts.

“We got a lot of noise, but not a lot of precipitation,” said Steve Burback of WeatherData Inc., which provides forecasts to The Times. “Most of the rain fell offshore.”

The lightning flashes and rumbling thunder mimicked the sounds of battle for a few people, fearful that the Persian Gulf War had reached home.

In Ventura County, dispatchers at the Oxnard and Port Hueneme police departments and the county Fire Department reported receiving more than a dozen calls from people confusing thunder and lightning with an invasion.

“All thought we had been invaded and were under attack,” one dispatcher said.

“Others thought there was a major battle at sea,” said another.

Given the constant television images of war and concerns about terrorism, it is understandable that people could turn the sounds of a storm into those of battle, said psychologist Mort Satten.

“They have seen shelling, missiles (on TV). . . . Many of them have a real immediate image of what war is like,” Satten told the Associated Press.

By afternoon, slightly less than half an inch of rain was measured at the Los Angeles County Lifeguard headquarters in Hermosa Beach, Lt. Mike Crum said. Some mountain areas reported five inches of snow.

Skies are expected to clear by this afternoon, Burback said.

California continues to wait for the major rain and snowstorms that will end its four-year drought and restore water supplies. Los Angeles usually receives about five times the 1.4 inches of rain that have fallen at the Civic Center since summer, records show. By 5 p.m. Monday, 0.02 of an inch of rain had been recorded in Los Angeles from the current storm.

“This storm isn’t going to make much difference; we need one to drop a couple of inches,” Burback said.

The electrical storm created a spectacular display for lifeguards working overnight shifts at stations from Long Beach to Point Mugu in Ventura County.

“It was an unbelievable light show,” said Bill Robinson, a lifeguard at Zuma Beach. “The lightning and thunder were really spectacular from about 5:30 a.m. It was like a tropical storm.”

In Long Beach, city lifeguard Dirk Crawford said the lightning brightened the dark hours before sunrise, but did not prompt any emergency calls.

Although rain fell on some Los Angeles freeways, there was not the usual rash of weather-related accidents, in part because the Martin Luther King Jr. holiday meant lighter-than-normal traffic, California Highway Patrol Officer Robert Strong said.

Jets leaving Los Angeles International Airport were rerouted early Monday to take off east over the city instead of west over the ocean because of high winds accompanying the storm, said Lee Nichols, a spokesman for the Department of Airports.

“It’s unusual and something we do only a very small percentage of the time,” Nichols said.

At Mt. Baldy in the San Gabriel Mountains, ski operators said about five inches of snow had fallen since early Monday, but was short of the amount needed for normal operations.

In the San Bernardino range, Snow Summit at Big Bear--which has lifts operating--received about four inches of new snow, ski operator Greg Ralph said.

At Krakta Ridge in the San Gabriels, the tiny sprinkling of snow only seemed to further aggravate restless lift operators there.

“This has been the strangest year,” said spokesman Ray Hensley. “We usually get the snow that doesn’t get to Big Bear or Mt. Baldy. But not this year.”