Storm Spoils Parades, Sets Off Slides : Weather: Wind-whipped downpour drops an inch in some places. In Thousand Oaks, a wall of debris crashes into one couple’s yard.

The strongest storm of the season doused Ventura County on Saturday, raining out two Christmas parades, washing rocks onto mountain highways and causing mudslides in a neighborhood still reeling from the Green Meadow fire.

Coming from the west, the storm began as a mist about 9:30 a.m. in Ventura and turned into a downpour by noon. Nearly an inch of rain, whipped by winds of up to 40 m.p.h., fell before the storm moved east.

The front dropped more than an inch of rain on Fillmore but left Newbury Park fairly dry, with only 0.35 inch, while soaking Thousand Oaks, just to the north, with 0.71.

The rain blew out of the area by about 3 p.m., and thousands of people showed up Saturday night for the 28th annual Parade of Lights at Channel Islands Harbor in Oxnard.

Forecasters predicted mostly sunny skies today with a high in the mid-60s. Rain is not expected again until Wednesday, and that storm will probably be milder.

California Department of Transportation crews were out all day Saturday bulldozing mud that oozed onto roadways from mountains scarred by recent fires.

Mudslides closed Deer Valley Avenue and Lynn Road in Thousand Oaks for about an hour until bulldozers cleared the debris. Crews from the Ventura County Fire Department used sandbags to buttress hillsides above the roads, but no homes were threatened.

A half-mile stretch of Pacific Coast Highway near Mugu Rock was lathered with mud up to five inches deep. Crews put up warning signs but kept the road open while removing the mud.

In Ojai, small boulders fell along California 33, but no accidents were reported.

Responding to calls in the area of the Green Meadow fire, county firefighters found some flooding and minor mudslides.

“It would have been worse if the rain had kept up, but it didn’t,” a Fire Department spokeswoman said.

The slides may have seemed minor to the Fire Department, but not to Bruce and Barbara Whetstone. When the rain came down at its most intense about noon on Saturday, so did the mud from the fire-damaged hillsides around their Thousand Oaks home.

The Whetstones were inside when they heard what they thought was rushing water. Bruce Whetstone looked out his back window and saw a three-foot wall of debris coming through his back yard.

“It busted through the small debris dams of hay on the hillside and broke through the fence,” Whetstone said. “It was like a river of mud.”

By the time crews from the county Fire Department and the California Department of Forestry arrived, the Whetstones’ back yard was filled with six inches of mud, sticks, rocks and hay.

Barbara Whetstone was angry with city officials and the crews that set up the debris dams after the fire. She said they contributed to the mudslide by diverting all the water onto one section of the hillside.

“The bales of hay clogged up the drainage and all the mud backed up behind them,” she said. “Of course it was going to break out.”

Touring a few of the properties damaged by Saturday’s mudslides, Thousand Oaks Public Works Director John Clement said the work of crews after the fire helped minimize damage during Saturday’s rainstorm.

“The debris dams really prevented more severe flooding,” Clement said.

After firestorms burned to within 50 yards of the Whetstones’ property, the mudslide has the couple wondering what will come next.

“I’m just waiting for the locusts,” Barbara Whetstone said.

On flatter land, preliminary surveys found no damage to farmland or crops by either the pounding rain or runoff from denuded mountains, said Rex Laird, executive director of the Ventura County Farm Bureau.

“If you’re talking three inches of rain, then there’d be some flooding and real estate moving around,” Laird said.

It rained on the 32nd annual Christmas Parade in Camarillo. Heavy sheets began to fall just as horses, floats and participants were assembling on Las Posas Road. The 10:30 a.m. cancellation led to a traffic jam along Carmen Drive at the height of the storm as marchers and spectators tried to leave the area.

In Oxnard, the Children’s Christmas Parade at Heritage Square was postponed until next Saturday.

In Moorpark, a Special Olympics horse show and Christmas party at Pete Peters’ Arabians ranch finished up in a drizzle but beat the heavy rain.

About 15 children were able to participate, including Raluca Rotaru, 8, of Thousand Oaks.

“She’s been bugging me about it every day,” said Emily Rotaru as her beaming daughter sat nearby, clutching a gold-tinted medal she won.

Like all the riders in the non-competitive show, Raluca also received a metal disk strung on a red, white and blue striped ribbon.

“I’m good!” Raluca said, pointing out her prize.

The rain wasn’t the only meteorological event in the county Saturday. There were large waves and very high tides, adding to the storm’s intensity along the coast.

However, the expected 10-footers failed to materialize. Surfers were disappointed early in the day when strong winds flattened the swell, but as the wind died in the afternoon, surfers enjoyed six- to eight-foot swells up and down the coast. Large waves are forecast again for this morning.

Times correspondent Matthew Mosk and Times staff writer Constance Sommer contributed to this story.

County Rainfall

Here are rainfall figures from the Ventura County Flood Control District for the 24-hour period ending at 6 p.m. Saturday. Oct. 1 is the beginning of the official rain year.

Rainfall Rainfall Normal rainfall Location last 24 hours since Oct. 1 to date Camarillo .63 1.35 3.00 Casitas Dam .98 NA 4.75 El Rio .87 NA 3.03 Fillmore 1.02 2.06 4.31 Moorpark .71 1.62 3.15 Ojai .28 1.58 4.18 Upper Ojai 1.61 3.19 4.49 Oxnard .59 .99 2.86 Piru .63 NA 3.44 Santa Paula .98 2.01 3.83 Simi Valley .59 1.82 2.92 Thousand Oaks .71 2.03 3.14 Ventura Govt. Center .98 1.95 3.21