Winter Keeps Grip on Desert : Weather: Storm drops up to 2 inches of snow on the Antelope and Santa Clarita valleys, knocks out power and stalls traffic.

Spring has sprung. April is just around the corner. And it’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas.

The latest in a series of unseasonal California storms dropped as much as two inches of snow Wednesday morning in areas as far south as the Antelope and Santa Clarita valleys.

About 1,500 houses in Little Rock, Tehachapi and Mojave went without power during the early hours as snow damaged electrical lines.

In Acton, where 7:30 a.m. flurries stalled traffic on the Antelope Valley Freeway, drivers pulled off the road to call work and say they would be late.

In Lancaster and Palmdale, snow fell lightly until 8:30 a.m.

“I’m from New York and I haven’t seen this much snow since I moved out here,” Ginny Terracciano of Canyon Country said. “The snowflakes were the size of golf balls.”

The Golden State Freeway was closed for three hours, beginning about 7:30 a.m., through the heavily blanketed Grapevine.

Local sheriff’s departments and the California Highway Patrol reported no major accidents and only a few headaches for commuters in other areas.

“Everybody was extra careful on the roads,” said Deputy Marty Shearer of the Antelope Valley Sheriff’s Department in Lancaster.

Snow closed the Hungry Valley State Vehicular Recreation Area, a park for off-road vehicle enthusiasts and motorhome campers near Gorman, the Sheriff’s Department said.

The storm began Tuesday with heavy rains.

One serious accident occurred about 7:30 p.m. when a car crossed the center divider and hit a guardrail on the Antelope Valley Freeway at Lost Canyon Road, killing a 66-year-old woman and injuring three people, including the driver. The victims’ names were not available Wednesday.

Mudslides briefly closed eastbound lanes of La Tuna Canyon Road west of the Foothill Freeway and one lane of San Fernando Mission Boulevard where the road crossed under the Simi Valley Freeway.

Rains also flooded parts of Lancaster and Quartz Hill, where Kathaleen Glavish lost a back lawn--the nighttime drenching turned it into a quagmire --but gained a small river running behind her house the next morning.

“I walked back there and sank in six inches,” Glavish said.

Farther east, two men escaped with their lives after spending seven hours stranded in a snow tractor on a mountainside near Wrightwood.

The vehicle carrying James Nichols, 55, of Wrightwood and Ron Riegel, 43, of Long Beach broke down Tuesday afternoon and was quickly buried in snow as the two radioed for help.

The men were trying to reach a ridge-top microwave transmission site. Employees from the nearby Mountain High ski resort found the tractor and dug it out at 11 p.m., a ski resort spokeswoman said. Nichols was treated for hypothermia at Victor Valley Community Hospital in Victorville. Riegel was not injured.

Snowfall in most lower elevations began after midnight and continued intermittently until almost 9 a.m., the National Weather Service said.

The snow level dropped as low as 2,000 feet, but the snow melted by noon in most areas. Some people, however, used the early morning conditions as a timely excuse.

“There have been a few people who came in and said they are playing hooky because they didn’t think they could get to work,” said Jack Miller, a clerk at Sand Canyon Paint & Hardware in the Santa Clarita Valley, where the streets had turned to slush by 8:30 a.m.

At Canyon High School in Canyon Country, the parking lot was half empty and attendance dipped to 60%.

Assistant Principal Denny Thompson explained that school buses weren’t able to reach students living in outlying hills.

But road conditions had nothing to do with a group of Canyon High students who were having a snowball fight in the parking lot of a Taco Bell near campus. They had spent the morning in Acton and returned with a pickup truck bed full of snow.

“Probably about half the school took the day off and went to the snow,” said Tammy McBride, 16, a sophomore.

Students in Lancaster faced no such temptation because they were on spring break, said Nancy Walker, a city spokeswoman.

And to the south, in Saugus, the snow didn’t stick around long enough to create a nuisance.

“When it hit the ground it was gone,” said Pam Wellcome, a resident who was nonetheless impressed. “We’ve lived here for 20 years, and this is only the third time I’ve seen snow.”

No one at the weather service seemed unusually excited about the unusual storm, but none of them had spoken to 5-year-old Matthew Derenski, who got to build a snowman in his Canyon Country front yard.

Matthew’s mother, Doreen, said she and her husband were planning a ski trip to Big Bear next week. On Wednesday morning, Derenski’s husband told her: “We could just ski the slopes of Sylmar.”