Storm Wreaks Havoc in County : Weather: Heavy rain contributes to the death of a motorist. Forecasters say the heat and humidity may linger until Labor Day.

Lightning, rain, wind, thunder, hail, heat and humidity all converged in San Diego County on Thursday, causing power outages and an accident that killed one motorist, officials said.

Heavy rain contributed to the death of a 61-year-old Arizona man who lost control of his car on Interstate 8 east of Alpine, said Rocky Rockwell, a spokesman for the California Highway Patrol.

Donald Walker of Sierra Vista, Ariz., died at 2 p.m. when he tumbled nearly 150 feet off Sweetwater Bridge, Rockwell said. He had climbed out of his car after he lost control of it in the rain, hit a guard rail and stopped in the middle of the freeway, the spokesman said.

Walker was pushed over the bridge when his car was rear-ended and hit him, Rockwell said. He died at the scene.

The driver and three passengers of the car that hit Walker’s vehicle were treated for minor injuries. Walker’s wife, Beatrice, 58, was airlifted to Grossmont Hospital, where she was in fair condition Thursday evening, a hospital spokeswoman said.

The hot and humid weather pattern may continue until Labor Day weekend, Sept. 5-7, forecasters said.

In another weather-related accident, an El Cajon man driving north on California 125 in La Mesa was in critical condition after his truck was hit by a car about 1 p.m., Rockwell said.

During a brief deluge, the pickup driven by James Alan Thomas crashed through the center divider, flipped and was struck by the car, Rockwell said.

Thomas was airlifted to Sharp Memorial Hospital, where he was in critical condition with head injuries, a hospital spokesman said.

Samir Y. Mansor of Loma Linda, the driver of the car, was taken to Grossmont Hospital with a neck injury, Rockwell said.

The storm’s power was strongly felt in the eastern part of the county, where its mighty winds blew in with lumberjack-like force.

Nine trees, one as high as 75 feet, were felled by erratic, gusty winds at Rancho San Diego Golf Course in El Cajon, a golf course employee said.

“It looks like a tornado just ripped through here,” said Steven Dephilippis, 30. “There are 200 large branches and about 300 smaller branches all over the place.”

The wind picked up suddenly for about 10 minutes in the early afternoon, he said. No one was injured at the golf course and the greens and buildings were not damaged.

The combination of thunder, lightning, wind and rain sent about 70 golfers scrambling to the clubhouse, Dephilippis said.

“People got out of their carts and started running. Running was faster than those carts,” he said.

The storm sent San Diego Gas & Electric Co. workers scrambling to restore power to 70,000 blacked-out residences.

“We have sporadic outages, stretched throughout the county,” Art Larson, a spokesman for the power company, said Thursday afternoon.

One of the largest blackouts was in Vista, where Larson said a substation failure left 6,000 people in the dark for a few hours.

Power failures were also reported in Escondido, Alpine, El Cajon, Descanso and Boulevard, Larson said.

At 1:45 p.m., lightning struck a transformer in North County that was 50 feet from a mobile home, firefighter Fred Weiss said.

“The electrical line zapped right into the (home), and the rest was history,” he said.

The mobile home, in the 100 block of Villa Sierra, was halfway burned to the ground when fire trucks arrived, Weiss said. He estimated damage to the destroyed trailer at $100,000.

Nobody was home during the fire, and no firefighters were hurt, he said.

The weather left National Weather Service forecaster Wilbur Shigehara wondering if it was more like Texas’ or Hawaii’s.

“The temperature and humidity is nearly identical to Waikiki Beach,” Shigehara said. But “the thunderheads we have are almost as big as the ones out in Texas.”

Or maybe it was like Seattle.

Nearly 6 inches of rain fell at Palomar Mountain, where three-quarter-inch balls of hail were reported, Shigehara said. On the other side of the county, Mt. Laguna reported more than 4 inches of rain, Shigehara said.

The odd weather began when a weak low-pressure system that developed over the county collided with the strong high-pressure system that had been entrenched here for several days, Shigehara said. The interacting systems created the thunderheads, which brought the rain, lightning and thunder rolling westward from the mountains. The storm combined with the heat and humidity already here to create the 82-degree temperatures at Lindbergh Field and the stormy conditions.

As the storms gained strength in the early afternoon, the Weather Service issued a flash-flood warning for the deserts. The warning was expected to be canceled by today.

The Weather Service also hoped to resume broadcasting its radio messages today, Shigehara said. A lightning strike--one of hundreds reported in the county--knocked out the service’s radio transmitter on Mt. Woodson, he said.

As quickly as it came, the almost surreal weather that darkened most of San Diego will leave, Shigehara said.

The weekend will be hot and muggy with only a few clouds, he said.

At the beaches, temperatures should reach about 76 degrees this weekend, he said.

The water temperature at the beach will be about 74 degrees, just a couple of degrees shy of the all-time high of 76 set in Mission Beach in 1983, Shigehara said.

The summer of 1983 was the hottest summer ever recorded, Shigehara said.

“This year we’re getting up there again with the help of the warm water caused by the El Nino,” Shigehara said.

If San Diego is going to make a run at the record, the next few weeks--the warmest weeks of the year--will decide this summer’s place in the record books, he said.

In the coastal area, the high temperature this weekend will reach 84 degrees, with an overnight low of 71.

Highs temperatures close to 100 degrees are expected in the inland areas this weekend, Shigehara said. At night the temperature will fall to about 70, with much humidity.

Temperatures in the mountains will climb to about 90 in the next few days, with a chance of lingering thunderstorms, Shigehara said. Nighttime lows will be in the 60s.

The deserts will swelter under heat and humidity with temperatures approaching 108 degrees this weekend. At night, the mercury will drop off only to about 85 degrees.