Countywide : Late-Season Storm Brings Brief Showers

A late-season storm front that brought brief showers to Ventura County on Tuesday may linger through tonight, triggering more lightning than rain, forecasters said.

A squall line stretched from Pine Mountain in Los Padres National Forest to the Channel Islands on Tuesday afternoon, with drenching rains reported in higher elevations, according to the National Weather Service.

Nearly an inch of rain fell in Lockwood Valley and just over half an inch at Lake Casitas by evening, according to the county’s automated rainfall measuring system. At lower elevations, barely enough rain had fallen to wet the ground by 8 p.m. “The upper-atmosphere front south of San Diego has been a little more vigorous than we anticipated,” said Rick Dittman, a forecaster with Weather Data Inc., a private company that supplies weather information to The Times.

The storm, pulling in moisture from Arizona and the Gulf of California, will produce scattered showers, especially over the mountains, he said.

But the thundershowers could produce more displays of lightning than rain before the storm moves through tonight, Dittman said, adding that “the lightning show will be quite spectacular.”