Few Were Dreaming of a White Easter : Holiday: Wintry weather leaves Southland looking more like Christmas, with snow down to the 1,500-foot level. Rain forces outdoor services inside and causes scattered power outages.

Easter dawned looking more like Christmas in parts of Southern California on Sunday as snowfall from an unusual spring storm closed the Antelope Valley Freeway and rain chased traditional sunrise services, egg hunts and picnics indoors.

Some churchgoers left their holiday best in their closets, opting instead for raincoats and umbrellas.

“I had a new skirt, a new hat all ready to go, but when I woke up and saw the rain I said, ‘Forget it,’ ” said Melanie Cooper, 25, who instead wore jeans, a sweat shirt and a rain slicker to an Easter morning service at Newport Beach’s Christ Church by the Sea.

The unseasonable storm coupled with a cold front moving down from Alaska dropped more than half an inch of rain on parts of the Southland and left high temperatures in some areas in the 40s.

By 3 p.m. the mercury had reached only 48 degrees in Van Nuys, 49 in Burbank and 46 in Lancaster.

“This is an unusually cold storm for (Southern California) this late in the season,” said meteorologist Curtis Brack of WeatherData Inc., which provides forecasts for The Times.

The Antelope Valley Freeway was closed for more than 2 1/2 hours during the middle of the day as road crews scrambled to clear away up to six inches of snow.

“There’s a lot of ice on the roadway too, because it rained just before it snowed,” said California Highway Patrol spokeswoman Kerri Hawkins.

Traffic backed up for miles until the road reopened about 2 p.m.

Snow fell down to the 1,500-foot level in the San Gabriel and Tehachapi mountains, leaving outlying areas from Canyon Country to La Crescenta dusted in white.

The storm also caused scattered power outages in North Hollywood, Reseda, Canoga Park, Westlake and Chatsworth, according to the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power.

Winds gusting to 35 m.p.h. toppled some trees, and the weight of four to five inches of snow brought giant limbs raining down on an Agua Dulce mobile home park.

“Everywhere you looked trees were falling,” said Richard Staton, who lives at the Hacienda Vasquez Mobile Home Park on Agua Dulce Canyon Road, where he said 10 mobile homes and several cars were damaged by the falling branches. “One guy was cooking in his kitchen and a branch crashed right through the roof. Missed him by about two feet.”

Staton sought help--”chain saws, four-wheel-drives and manpower”--from the Santa Clarita Vineyard Fellowship, which was meeting at nearby Valencia High School.

“They were having Easter services, and I went in and said: ‘We need your help. This is an emergency.’ It was pretty neat,” he said.

Icy conditions made driving hazardous on highways leading into and out of Los Angeles.

The CHP received about 420 reports of traffic accidents or other roadway problems in Los Angeles County, more than three times the number on a typical Sunday, said spokeswoman Hawkins.

Temperatures at the Civic Center, where nearly half an inch of rain fell, reached a high of 54 degrees Sunday.

While the wet, blustery weather played havoc with Easter morning institutions, organizers of the Hollywood Bowl sunrise service were thanking their lucky stars. They had already scheduled their event for the Woman’s Club of Hollywood because of renovations at the Bowl.

“We must have been doing something right,” said Norma Foster, who produced the service. “To have spent all that money to put it on and to have canceled it would have been terrible.”

This year’s scaled-back service attracted a little more than 300 people, a mere fraction of the thousands who turn out at the Bowl. The rain could have been a blessing, Foster said, “because if it hadn’t rained, we probably would have had to turn people away.”

Outdoor services at several Forest Lawn cemeteries were moved inside, a spokeswoman said, and a rooftop breakfast for residents and staff at Downtown’s Union Rescue Mission was instead held indoors.

In Orange County, the inclement weather scuttled some traditional events that couldn’t be salvaged.

Easter Sunday typically brings throngs of picnickers to Mile Square Park in Fountain Valley and other parks throughout the county--crowds so large they sometimes cause patrol problems for law enforcement. But the rain, wind and cold conspired to keep celebrants inside Sunday, law enforcement officials said.

The First Southern Baptist Church’s sunrise service, scheduled at Knott’s Berry Farm in Buena Park, also was canceled because of the rain.

But the scattered showers that continued throughout the day didn’t dash spirits on one of Christianity’s most important holidays.

“The rain can’t dampen it. The weather cannot defeat it,” said the Rev. David F. Lehmberg, pastor at Newport Beach’s Christ Church by the Sea, as he asked worshipers to embrace their faith.

“There’s a presence on our side in this continuing battle called life. We are never alone,” he told more than 60 worshipers, most of whom were casually dressed for the weather.

Lehmberg had planned to hold his sunrise service on the beach along the Balboa Peninsula near 14th Street, just a short distance from the church. But the rain changed that, and he blamed the weather for the low turnout.

Though the storm began moving inland by late afternoon Sunday, new storms are due Tuesday and Thursday, forecasters said.

“They’re just kind of lined up coming out of the Gulf of Alaska,” Brack said. “They should be a little weaker.

“At this time of the year you’d expect to be getting into the dry, summertime patterns of mostly sunny skies. This is an unseasonably late winter storm.”

Boyer reported from Los Angeles, Slater from the San Fernando Valley. Staff writer Rene Lynch contributed to this report from Orange County.