Storm Threatens Homes, School : Rain: Floodwaters undermine property and cause power outages amid record cold for the date. Two people die in weather-related crashes.

Floods threatened homes and an elementary school in Glendale on Friday as record-breaking cold and chilling rain brought winter to Southern California in June.

A flood control retaining wall collapsed in the middle of the afternoon as swift-flowing waters began to erode the earth near Hillside Drive between Canada Boulevard and Verdugo Road in Glendale, a police spokeswoman said.

Christine Goebel, a dispatch supervisor, said the first emergency call about the erosion came at 2:43 p.m. Mud slithered down the Verdugo flood control channel and earth next to three nearby homes was stripped away.

“Two homes are losing their retaining walls, one is losing its driveway and a side yard is also going,” Goebel said. “It gets worse every minute.”

She said the flooding ripped away about 200 feet of a playground at Verdugo Woodlands Elementary School and threatened a building on the grounds.

The flooding knocked out power lines in the area. Goebel said residents were advised to move their cars to safer areas.

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The rainfall, which totaled 0.46 of an inch at the Los Angeles Civic Center by 5 p.m. and considerably more than that in most foothill communities, came on the coolest June 16 in Los Angeles history. The high on Friday was 61 degrees, three degrees below the coolest previous high temperature for the date.

The rainfall also beat a record, one that had held for 66 years. The previous record for rainfall on June 16 was 0.15 of an inch in 1929. Friday’s rain only added to the abundance of precipitation this year, already 10 inches above the 14.77-inch average.

Storms like the one that hit Los Angeles this week typically unleash their fury in the northern Plains states. But this time, the storm’s normal eastward route was blocked by a high-pressure system over south-central Canada.

“It continued to dip south and got stuck in California for the last 48 hours,” said Gene Van Cor, a spokesman for the National Weather Service.

So, on a day when people in Southern California sported umbrellas and splashed in puddles, people in Wiliston, N.D., about 40 miles south of the Canadian border, basked in temperatures of 96 degrees.

“The weather is upside-down,” Van Cor said.

Other daily rainfall totals by 5 p.m. included 1.58 inches in Pasadena, 1.10 in San Gabriel, 1.05 in Monrovia, 0.65 of an inch in Newport Beach, 0.56 in Anaheim, 0.34 in Culver City and 0.16 in San Juan Capistrano.

The unseasonal weather forced the closure of the Six Flags Water Park amusement center in Valencia hours after its grand opening.

“The big disappointment for us is that the guests came up here and were excited about opening day and now they are disappointed,” said Bonnie Rabjohn, a Six Flags California spokeswoman. “But, I mean, you can’t control the weather. Just another day in paradise.”

Snow was reported in the San Bernardino, San Gabriel and San Jacinto mountains at elevations above 5,000 feet and authorities said tire chains were required in some areas.

In the Los Angeles area, the rains contributed to a number of accidents, including a fiery crash in La Puente that killed two people. A sheriff’s spokesman said a van being driven at high speed overturned, bounced off two cars and burst into flames.

In Sherman Oaks, three people were injured, one of them critically, in a multiple-vehicle accident at Magnolia Boulevard and Columbus Avenue. The most seriously injured victim was taken to Sherman Oaks Hospital and Health Center.

A 15-car chain-reaction pileup on the San Bernardino Freeway near San Dimas was among dozens of other weather-related accidents on Southland highways.

While the weather was cool and rainy Friday, skies were expected to begin clearing by this morning. Temperatures are expected to climb into the lower 70s by this afternoon.

The outlook is much the same for the rest of the weekend, except for morning low clouds and fog in the coastal areas.