An Ill Wind : Weather: Gusts knocked down power lines and may have made a mess of the seed sown after the wildfires.

Gale-force winds from the fringes of an arctic storm lashed Southern California before dawn on Monday, uprooting trees, bringing down power lines and whipping up grimy blizzards of ashes, dust--and probably newly sown grass seed--in areas ravaged by the recent brush fires.

Several wind-related fires were put out Monday before they could do any significant damage in the San Fernando Valley and Malibu, and firefighting reinforcements were at the ready for a possible return of the recent blazes that scorched thousands of acres of brush.

Wind gusts of more than 40 m.p.h. knocked down power lines, sparking a five-acre brush blaze in the horse-owner community of Shadow Hills near Sun Valley and a house fire in Montrose, but the big fires never came.

However, the wind brought reminders of the recent blazes.

“It looked as though the fire was burning again, the way the ashes were blowing all over the place,” said Jack Martin, 62, whose home was spared when flames devastated his Altadena neighborhood three weeks ago.

“It was like it was snowing,” he said, “only this time, the snow was brown.”

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Officials said the scouring winds may have dealt a serious blow to reseeding efforts undertaken last week in an effort to reduce mudslides and erosion this winter when expected downpours meet fire-denuded slopes.

“Those winds were our worst-case scenario, other than a really heavy rain,” said Clyde Sims, an assistant chief with the Los Angeles County Fire Department’s forestry division.

“When I drove up the 210 Freeway, I saw a lot of dust and ash in the air, and I presume some of the seed was in the air too,” Sims said. “That certainly wasn’t what we had wanted.”

Sims said that even though last week’s relatively gentle rains may have caused some of the seeds to germinate, it is still too early for the fledging plants to take root firmly.

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The extent of the wind damage to seeding in the fire areas won’t be known until a thorough field inspection is completed later this week, Sims said. He said there is still time to reseed again, but whether it will be done remains “a question mark because of the money involved.”

The ashen cloud from the Altadena burn area spread southwest over Pasadena like a pall of gritty smog late Sunday and early Monday, depositing a layer of gray-brown dust throughout the city.

The winds--which gusted as high as 53 m.p.h. in the Santa Monica Mountains--churned up waterspouts off Oceanside, Del Mar and Camp Pendleton Monday morning.

High winds uprooted a tree that demolished a car in Corona del Mar, and extensive tree damage was reported in foothill communities at the base of the San Gabriel and San Bernardino mountains.

Wind knocked down a power pole in the 10600 block of McBroom Street in Shadow Hills about 4 a.m., Los Angeles City Fire Department spokesman Bob Collis said. Twelve homes were threatened, but nine engine companies and three helicopters extinguished the blaze in 23 minutes, before it could cause any injuries or damage to property.

DWP crews worked much of the day to reinstall poles and restring lines to restore power to 500 customers.

A Glendale firefighter was slightly injured shortly after midnight Monday during a blaze that gutted an abandoned house in the 1800 block of Park Place in a county area of Montrose. The fire was started by arcing power lines and caused about $70,000 in damage.

At least 21,000 Los Angeles Department of Water and Power customers lost their electricity late Sunday and early Monday when lines were downed by the winds, but in most cases, service was restored by midafternoon Monday.

About 3,800 electricity customers in the San Fernando Valley experienced service interruptions. By midmorning, power had been restored for all but 1,100 customers.

In addition to the 500 whose power was out because of the Shadow Hills fire, 600 were inconvenienced when the wind caused a transformer fire at the intersection of Cozycroft Avenue and Sherman Way in Winnetka. Service was back on in the area by early afternoon.

Embers from the Calabasas/Malibu fire were fanned to life by the winds, and several small thickets of brush burned before the blazes were brought under control by firefighters.

A tactical team of three Los Angeles city fire engine companies was deployed at Fire Station 88 in Sherman Oaks, and at least five more were sent elsewhere in the Valley to reinforce firefighting resources. The so-called move-up was made as a precaution because of an “extreme rating on the brush-burning index,” Capt. Steve Ruda said.

Curtis Brack, a meteorologist with WeatherData Inc., said the winds were generated by a cold, upper-level storm system that swept south along the eastern slope of the Sierra, bypassing the Los Angeles Basin and much of coastal Southern California.

Snow dusted the peaks of the San Gabriel and San Bernardino mountains and the Cleveland National Forest, and brief but heavy thunder showers were reported in the foothills of eastern San Diego County.

As the storm system headed east into Arizona Monday afternoon, the winds here began to diminish, all but ending in most areas of Southern California by nightfall.

Brack said skies should be mostly sunny today and Wednesday in the Los Angeles area, with little wind and high temperatures ranging from the mid-60s to the mid-70s. The high at the Los Angeles Civic Center on Monday was 73 degrees, following an overnight low of 53.

A low-pressure system moving slowly down the coast will bring a chance of a minor shower Thursday, Brack said. He said skies should clear again Friday, with another round of gusty winds possible by the weekend.

While the rain predicted Thursday should not pose much of a threat, fire officials are concerned about longer-range forecasts.

They say that downpours this winter--falling on burned slopes stripped of the vegetation needed to hold soil in place--could wreak devastation even worse than last winter, when heavy rains and mudslides destroyed homes, buried highways and killed more than a dozen people.

Staff writers Richard Lee Colvin and Josh Meyer contributed to this report.