Storm Snarls Rush-Hour Commuting : Weather: CHP reports 300 accidents on Southland freeways. But ski resorts and water officials welcome snow and rain.

Southern Californians slipped and skidded to work Thursday morning as the season’s first major rainstorm made freeway driving treacherous.

The California Highway Patrol reported a 69% increase in traffic accidents on area freeways between 5 and 9 a.m. More than 300 accidents occurred in that span, delaying commuters by as much as 90 minutes, authorities said.

“There were a lot of accidents, that’s for sure,” said CHP Officer Susan Gonzalez. “Every time it rains like this, our activity at least triples.”

No rain is expected today or this weekend, but for commuters, Thursday was bad enough.

The Santa Monica Freeway was flooded near East Los Angeles. A jackknifed tractor-trailer rig at the northbound interchange of the Long Beach and Artesia freeways tied up traffic for hours.

For some, the storm clouds had a silver lining. At Snow Summit ski resort in Big Bear, where raindrops turned to snowflakes, folks were rejoicing.

“We’re in the snow!” cried spokeswoman Bonnie Tregaskis as the resort prepared to open this weekend. “We’ve had a couple of flakes before, but this is the first really good storm. It’s beautiful!”

Snow was falling in the San Bernardino Mountains above 6,000 feet, and six inches of powder was expected to accumulate. CHP officers were bracing for an influx of skiers taking advantage of the Veterans Day holiday today and heading to resorts such as Snow Summit.

Snow chains were required on California 18, but that wasn’t enough for one driver, whose vehicle went out of control and over the side of the mountain road. But CHP Officer George Berge said no one was injured.

Back in the Los Angeles Basin, things were warmer but no less dangerous. “We have this big board which lights up to show all the traffic problems,” said California Department of Transportation spokesman Russ Snyder on Thursday morning. “The big board (is) solid red.”

Two big truck rigs hit freeway center dividers during rush hour Thursday morning--one on the westbound Artesia Freeway in Compton, the other on the southbound Harbor Freeway.

Ventura County was more fortunate--rain there tapered off before daylight and the CHP reported that traffic was normal. “We just missed it,” said a CHP officer in Oxnard.

But in Orange County, it was messy. About 9 a.m. in Orange, mud cascaded down a steep embankment near the Santa Ana Freeway onto Chapman Avenue, closing a freeway on-ramp for about an hour.

Fair skies are forecast for today and through the weekend, with lows in the 30s to 50s and highs in the mid-50s and 60s in the mountains and coastal areas, respectively. The high in Downtown Los Angeles on Thursday was 62 and the low was 52. A total of 0.31 of an inch of rain fell.

The rain fouled many a commute, but at the Metropolitan Water District, the agency that supplies Southern California with most of its water, it was a happy sight. California is under a drought watch, and while most of the Southland’s water is drawn from either the Colorado River or reservoirs in northern California, some comes from ground water.

“The more there is down here, it lessens the need to trade supplies with the north,” said MWD spokesman Rob Hallwachs. “We never complain about rain.”

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