Southland Smacked by Cold Storm

A cold storm struck Southern California on Sunday, turning the streets slippery with rain but blessing ski slopes with welcome snow.

The storm arrived midday Sunday, just as predicted, dropping up to half an inch of rain on the Los Angeles Basin. Forecasters said rain should fall steadily before the storm moves on, probably late today.

The mountains got a fresh layer of snow Sunday, 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, gardeners and tow-truck drivers shared her sentiment.

“We really love this weather,” said Norma Villanueva, who helps her husband run Tony’s Lawn Service in South Gate. “The grass gets green, and we take more green to the bank.”

“Calls for accidents and disabled vehicles pick up,” said Ronald Lockett, dispatcher and office supervisor for Just For You Towing in South-Central Los Angeles. “The roads get a little slicker and most motorists don’t anticipate that kind of problem.”

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.’ ”

Though it snowed steadily Sunday on the Grapevine--dumping enough on Mt. Pinos for afternoon snowball fights--the Golden State Freeway remained open to traffic, CHP Officer Chris St. Cyr said.

“The snow is sticking to the shoulders and the center divider but not the freeway,” St. Cyr said. “Road conditions are wet, that’s all. And it’s cold.”

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

“I’m freezing,” actress Julia Louis-Dreyfus 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 Curtis Brack, a meteorologist with WeatherData Inc. of Wichita, Kan., which provides weather information for The Times.

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 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 Monday night, 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 miles per hour at the lower elevations, Brack said. The mountains will see even stronger winds.

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