Nature’s Latest Punch Isn’t a Knockout Blow : Weather: Rainstorm causes plenty of problems but is less severe than expected. Some dry days are forecast.

What had been billed as the worst yet in a 10-day series of storms that killed at least seven people and caused record flooding charged through Southern California so fast Saturday that it left more relief than damage in its wake.

Manholes popped. Freeways flooded. Mudslides threatened homes. Hail pelted crops. Creeks rose perilously in canyons. More than 70 oaks were uprooted by winds in Santa Barbara. But the worst never happened. Just three-quarters of an inch of rain fell at the Los Angeles Civic Center, and less than one inch at Woodland Hills--one of the hardest-hit communities throughout the historic series of storms.

The quick passing of the storm, and the prospect of at least a few dry days to come, were welcome breaks for rain-weary Southern Californians.

“We were expecting a humdinger, and we got a normal storm instead,” said Steve Burback of WeatherData Inc., which provides forecasts for The Times. “After some scattered showers, it should be partly cloudy and dry. At least for the next couple days.”

Asked if this was the last in the series of deadly February storms, he hesitated. Forecasters are keeping an eye on a spot in the Pacific north of Hawaii that could materialize into another storm arriving in California by Tuesday.

Expecting the worst, the city of Los Angeles had deployed more than 300 people Saturday in what was described as the city’s largest volunteer effort in memory for a natural disaster. More than 150 members of the California Conservation Corps also had been dispatched.

“What I envisioned was a tremendous hillside sliding . . . the mother of all storms,” said Bill Russell, a city health official who was coordinating the effort. “But we were lucky. We fed 150 of the volunteers lunch and sent them home.”

Though it did not measure up to expectations, Saturday’s storm still wreaked havoc. In Los Angeles, rain was so heavy at times Saturday morning that it appeared to be overwhelming the flood control system. But officials said that the system performed flawlessly. Though the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power had prepared for the worst, adding 30 extra crews to its weekend complement, power failures were localized.

Travel remained difficult throughout much of the state, with Amtrak connections between Los Angeles and Santa Barbara remaining out of service, and freeway off-ramps and city streets flooded.

A tornado touched down shortly after 11:30 a.m at a mobile home park on the Camp Pendleton Marine Base in San Diego County, said Marine Sgt. Nephi Limb. The twister downed several trees but caused no injuries, he said.

In the San Fernando Valley, hit hard all week by the storms, four of six Santa Clarita families who had been evacuated because a hillside had cracked above their cul-de-sac were allowed to return home Saturday, relieved that a mudslide had been averted. The slope had been shielded from the rain with sheets of plastic.

But Santa Clarita building inspectors ordered two families to stay away from their residences in the 19000 block of Maplebay Court because of lingering concerns that a waterlogged hillside might still collapse.

In Orange County, the storm dumped heavy rains, threatening to breach a flood control channel. Buena Park officials were keeping a wary eye on a channel that had developed cracks along one of its concrete banks during recent storms, threatening to send floodwaters gushing toward a neighborhood and busy Beach Boulevard.

For a time during the storm Saturday morning, authorities considered shutting down the thoroughfare and evacuating about 100 people from homes and businesses in the area, but held off as the rains began to abate.

To the north in Ventura County, mudslides blocked off a canyon community in Ojai, a creek in Oakview flooded nearby homes, and farm workers had to be airlifted off a Camarillo hillside Saturday after their field was flooded. Two youths fell into a drainage channel in Thousand Oaks, but managed to pull themselves out of the swift water.

The storm was considered the most potent of the season in the northern Sierra, where it dumped up to three feet of snow--spelling good news for the drought, but marooning travelers on a holiday weekend.

More than a foot of snow fell in parts of the San Bernardino Mountains. Interstate 5 remained open all day through the Grapevine, where California Highway Patrol units were escorting motorists through the most hazardous areas.

Weather temporarily suspended a search for two experienced skiers who had disappeared Tuesday after an avalanche this week on Mt. Baldy.

“The mountain is too unstable and the conditions are not conducive to a successful search,” said a representative of the Mt. Baldy Search and Rescue Team. If conditions improve, he said, the hunt for the pair could resume today with 40 to 60 searchers.

Still missing from the storms were a crew member from a Marine Corps helicopter that sank off the coast of Oxnard; a Ventura transient reported missing from his campsite at the Ventura River, and a fugitive who fled Orange County authorities by jumping into a swollen river. At least seven people have been confirmed killed by the series of storms.

More than 70 oak trees were uprooted near Jalama Beach in northern Santa Barbara County as a result of a tornado or downdraft during an intense thunderstorm at 2 a.m. Saturday.

“It’s an eerie sight, it really is,” said Don Eittreim, owner of the Jalama Beach Store. “Limbs of trees with no foliage sticking out of the ground. A steel post completely bent in a U-shape. It’s really strange for this part of the country.”

About the same time, winds of more than 92 m.p.h. were recorded at Vandenberg Air Force Base, 40 miles to the northwest.

Saturday’s rain brings the season total to 13.50 inches for the Civic Center, well above the 9.81 inches norm for this time of year. Last year, only 1.90 inches of rain had fallen by Feb. 15.

There have been five storms since the series began Feb. 5. Clearly picking favorites, the storms dumped a total of 16.46 inches on Woodland Hills--twice what it left in downtown Los Angeles and five times what fell at Los Angeles International Airport.

“I was kind of relieved that it wasn’t that bad this morning,” said Woodland Hills resident Bob Farmer, 53, who was out for a walk on a surprisingly dry Saturday afternoon. “It was pouring and pouring and pouring. You go a mile a way and there was nothing. The storm just seemed to have stuck here.”

In fact, said meteorologist Burback, the community was the victim of a phenomenon known as a “train echo.”

“A train echo is where a series of showers or storms follow a repeat run over the same area,” Burback said. “That’s what happened with Woodland Hills.”

The storms provided a rare mixing of habitats. Stunned rattlesnakes carried downstream by frantic rains woke up on the beach, winding their way through driftwood at the mouth of the Ventura River. Upstream, in Matilija Canyon near Ojai, frogs took up residence in slopes where rattlesnakes are more likely to hide.

“We have hundreds of frogs that have somehow realized there’s a playground out there,” Matilija Canyon resident Allen Carrozza said. “You sleep like the Waltons at night here.”

Carrozza and his neighbors had built their own dikes in preparation for a new onslaught Saturday. But miniature geysers began spouting inside his yard, the product of a sudden rise in the underground water table.

Cachuma Lake has risen 33 feet since the storms began, said Dennis Gibbs, a Santa Barbara County hydrologist. That means the lake was back to 80% capacity. Boat docks were reinstalled in the lake this past week. “Nobody can say we’re drying up now,” snapped a Lake Cachuma shopkeeper.

Contributing to the storm coverage were Times staff members Mayerene Barker, John Chandler, Tracey Kaplan, Santiago O’Donnell, Carol Watson, Chris Woodyard, Jim Herron Zamora and Michael Meyers in Los Angeles; Eric Bailey, Vivien Chen, James M. Gomez, Davan Maharaj and Danny Sullivan in Orange County, and Alan Hagman and Psyche Pascual in Ventura County.