Heavenly Tango : Dazzling Lightning, a Little Rain

A dazzling thunder and lightning storm early Friday yielded little rain but left in its wake forest fires, power outages and nightmarish commutes throughout the county.

A 10th of an inch of rain fell at Lindbergh Field, but heavier rains and a return of the thunder and lightning are expected today through Sunday morning. National Weather Service meteorologist Wilbur Shigehara said the county can expect up to half an inch of rain with strong showers today and tonight.

Elsewhere in the county, Julian received the most rain with 1.10 inches, El Centro followed with 1.03 inches, Mt. Laguna 0.96 of an inch, Fallbrook 0.34 of an inch and Alpine 0.19 of an inch.

A storm from the Gulf of Alaska that brought appreciable rain to Northern California and Los Angeles earlier this week is responsible for San Diego’s wild weather, Shigehara said. The storm stalled Friday about 200 miles southwest of Ensenada but was expected to boomerang back today.

“We should all be chanting, ‘Bring us more,’ ” Shigehara said of the rainfall, the first the county has experienced in almost three months. “If people in San Diego think the world is coming to an end because we got a quarter inch of rain, we’re falling apart. It was the lightning that produced the most damage.”

The California Department of Forestry recorded nearly 3,000 lightning strikes between midnight and daylight Friday in San Diego’s backcountry, said agency spokeswoman Roxanne Provavnik. Foresters spent much of the day surveying their territory by air for lightning-related fires after six small blazes cropped up early in the morning, she said.

No structures were threatened in the fires that dotted remote areas of Borrego, Pine Valley, Vulcan Mountain, Cuyamaca and south Julian, Provavnik said. Firefighters promptly quelled the fires that burned less than 100 acres each, a spokesman said.

Friday’s flames brought the year’s number of lightning-related fires to 42, Provavnik said. That figure contrasts sharply with the handful of similar fires reported last season, she said.

Meteorologist Shigehara attributed the increase in lightning-related fires to the dry conditions on the ground and many high level-thunderstorms in the past year that yielded little rain.

“Normally, the thunderstorm patterns we have are wet, but lately we’ve had a lot of thunderstorms that produce a lot of lightning, but don’t have enough water in them,” Shigehara said. “Add to that, we are tinder-dry on the ground.”

Lightning strikes early Friday also left 69,580 San Diego Gas & Electric customers without power throughout the county, SDG&E; spokesman Dave Smith said.

Rain-soaked telephone cables caused minor disruption of service for Pacific Bell customers in the backcountry of San Diego County and the Imperial Valley, said John Britton, a spokesman for the phone company. The wet cables created static and poor sound quality, but no major outages were reported, he said.

The Friday morning commute was relatively calm despite rain-slicked roads, but the evening commute was bumper to bumper, with many minor accidents, the California Highway Patrol reported.

“Considering it was the first major rain of the season, traffic went really well,” Officer Tom Christian said of the morning commute. “We had 54 incidents this morning, but today was a breeze compared to last year, when we had more than 260 accidents on one rainy morning.”

Officer Phil Konstantin painted a different picture of the evening commute, saying that all local freeways were more clogged than usual for the end-of-the-week commute, and the slick roads caused cars to slide into other cars and median lanes.

San Diego’s rainy season runs from July to July and is now about 0.30 inch shy of the 0.47 of an inch to be expected by this time of year, Shigehara said. By this time last year, San Diego had recorded 0.53 of an inch of rain, he said.

Before Friday’s storm, San Diego last experienced rain Aug. 5, when about 0.05 of an inch fell. Shigehara said rain this weekend should bring the county up to near normal levels for the month, but not the season.

“We’re so far behind, it’s not funny,” Shigehara said. “The rain we had Friday simply was not enough. It just settled the dust.”

An extended forecast calls for average rainfall through Christmas, Shigehara said.

The high Friday at Lindbergh Field was 73 degrees. The norm for this time of year is 74.

Temperatures this weekend will remain slightly below the seasonal norm, Shigehara said. Periodic sunshine should break through the clouds, and there should be more clearing by Sunday, he said.

Coastal highs through Sunday will range from 73 to 78, with lows from 60-66, Shigehara said. Inland highs are expected to be from 76-82 today and 75-80 on Sunday.

The ocean temperature is 67 degrees. Surf is at 2 to 4 feet. The mountains will range from 65 to 70 during the day and dip into the 40s tonight, according to the forecast. Desert highs today should peak in the 80s, with an overnight low in the mid-60s.