Slick Roads and Fender-Benders Arrive With Southland Storm

A cold storm struck the Southland on Sunday, making Orange County’s freeways slippery with rain and triggering a slew of fender benders.

The storm arrived midday Sunday, just as predicted, dropping up to almost half an inch of rain in some areas of the county. Forecasters said rain should fall steadily before the storm moves on, probably late today.

But Orange County residents should be prepared for a cold Tuesday, with temperatures predicted to drop to the low 30s in the foothills and low 40s near the coast.

One welcomed product of the storm was a fresh layer of snow dumped on the region’s ski slopes, with predictions for up to a foot of flakes, turning ski-slope operators giddy.

“When I look out my window out at the ground, the snow is already covering everything but big pine cones,” said Bonnie Tregaskis, communications director for Snow Summit ski resort near Big Bear Lake.

“We’ll take all we can get,” she said, noting that the last significant snow was a month-old memory. “These flakes look like dollar signs.”

In the valleys below, officers with the California Highway Patrol were busy throughout the afternoon, responding to reports about capsized cars and multi-vehicle pileups.

A spokesman at the CHP’s communication center in Santa Ana said CHP officers had fielded about 400 calls for service--most of them related to weather--during a four-hour period starting about 2 p.m. “It’s simple,” the spokesman said, “the roads get slick, they lose control, they crash.”

There were no reports of anyone suffering serious injuries in the crashes, the spokesman said.

By 4 p.m. Sunday, Anaheim recorded 0.38 inches rainfall, Newport Beach received 0.15 and San Juan Capistrano reported 0.20. Rainfall of 0.18 inches fell in Santa Ana.

Officers with several police departments said they responded to several traffic accidents, but none was serious.

In Santa Ana, police called out a city crew to clear a clogged storm drain at MacArthur Boulevard and Bristol Street. The intersection was closed for about 30 minutes, according to Santa Ana Police Sgt. Dave Petko.

In Huntington Beach, a Caltrans crew was summoned after runoff from the rainfall rose on Pacific Coast Highway between Golden West Street and Warner Avenue, but the road remained open, according to a police watch commander.

Even with Sunday’s showers, the county was still below its normal rainfall.

So far, Santa Ana has received a total of 2.17 inches. The normal for this time of year is 5.79 inches. Last season, 13.02 inches had fallen by this time.

Curtis Brack, a meteorologist with WeatherData Inc., which supplies weather information to The Times, said showers are expected to end by this evening, but expect temperatures to drop tonight.

“It going to be a little chilly before it warms up later in the week,” Brack said.

In Los Angeles, California Highway Patrol Officer Garry Goldenberg said Sunday’s rain predictably turned the freeways treacherous, with officers dispatched to four times as many calls as on a dry day.

No fatal crashes were reported as of Sunday evening, though there seemed to be too many fender-benders to count, he added.

“They think, ‘I have to go 65 or 70,’ ” Goldenberg said. “They don’t realize, ‘I can slow down.’ ”

The high temperature Sunday in Los Angeles was 60 degrees. The rain made it feel much colder.

“I’m freezing,” actress Julia Louis-Dreyfuss told reporters at the threshold of the Golden Globe Awards ceremony in Beverly Hills--a sentiment apparently shared by dozens of other shivering, gown-clad celebrities.

The experts agreed with the Hollywood goose-bump test. “This looks like one of the coldest air masses so far this season coming into California,” said Brack.

The normal flow of cold, wet weather from the Gulf of Alaska had been blocked for weeks by persistent ridges of high pressure that stretched across central California, Nevada and Utah.

Toward the end of last week, that high pressure began breaking down. The first rain of 1996 fell last Tuesday on parched ground--with forecasters accurately predicting that more rain would arrive during the weekend.

Scattered showers are expected to continue through today, dumping up to half an inch more rain on the foothills and bringing snow in the mountains down to the 2,500-foot level.

Today’s high in Los Angeles is expected to be 57. As skies begin clearing tonight, the temperature is due to drop to the low 40s--and to the 20s and 30s in the foothills and well below freezing in the mountains.

Winds will gust to 25 mph at the lower elevations, Brack said. The mountains will see even stronger winds.

Times staff writer John L. Mitchell contributed to this report.