Big Chill Brings Snow to Valley

Snow came down as far south as Glendale and Burbank on Sunday, closing highways and possibly causing a fatal accident, as Southern California shivered through the worst cold snap of the season.

Although only traces of snow descended on higher elevations in the San Fernando Valley, according to Rob Kaczmarek of WeatherData Inc., some parts of the Santa Clarita and Antelope valleys to the north got as much as three inches.

On Sunday evening, the cold and wet weather caused the closure of Interstate 5 from near Castaic north to Gorman, and was the probable cause of a fatal accident on a remote section of the Angeles Crest Highway.

One woman was killed and five people injured when the car they were in plunged about 150 feet down a canyon near the Chilao Campground, about 10 miles north of Monrovia, according to County Fire Department spokeswoman Charlotte Kramer.

The unidentified 31-year-old woman was pronounced dead at the scene and a 34-year-old man was listed in critical condition at Huntington Memorial Hospital in Arcadia, Kramer said.

Four other passengers riding in the Chevy Blazer suffered minor injuries and were not hospitalized after the accident that occurred shortly before 6 p.m.

Authorities said slippery conditions caused by the rain and snow apparently caused the accident.

The heavily traveled Interstate 5 had traffic interruptions throughout the day. In addition to its closure on Sunday night, California Highway Patrol officers were escorting traffic in small caravans as far south as Newhall in the Santa Clarita Valley, according to CHP spokeswoman Shirley Gaines.

The escorts aimed at curbing drivers from traveling at unsafe speeds.

“It’s been getting worse all day and the public just won’t slow down,” Gaines said.

The cold snap, caused by an unusual jet stream moving south from Canada, left high temperatures at about the spot on the thermometer where lows ordinarily hover in many parts of Southern California, and it pushed temperatures in some inland areas to below freezing.

As the storm moved east, it dropped occasional showers mixed with pea-size hailstones over parts of the San Fernando Valley, especially northwest of Burbank.

In San Francisco, the weather was so cold that motorists had to scrape ice off their windshields Sunday morning.

“The coldest weather of the season is here,” said meteorologist Kaczmarek in Wichita, Kan., where Sunday’s high of 75 degrees was almost 20 degrees higher than the high at the Los Angeles Civic Center.

The cold temperatures were expected to remain through the week, and Southern California also could see showers at least today, with a break Tuesday before rain was expected to resume Wednesday. “It will be really unsettled,” Kaczmarek said.

National Weather Service meteorologist Clay Morgan added, “There is a very cold storm developing and intensifying, especially in the higher elevations. Wet weather will be with us for the next few days.”

If the chilly temperatures and threatening skies kept many indoors Sunday, the weather was as welcome to skiers as discounted lift tickets.

Storms earlier in the season had been unusually warm, bringing rain instead of snow to the high elevations, but the coldest snap of the year meant a low moisture content that created the kind of light powder snow that skiers love. And continued cold temperatures promised to keep the snow in excellent condition. Mammoth Mountain Ski Area reported a temperature of 6 degrees at sunrise, going up to 18 by midmorning.

Skiers celebrated the storms that have dropped as much as 12 feet of snow in the past week in some parts of the Sierra Nevada. At Alpine Meadows Ski Area near Lake Tahoe, spokesman Robert Olmer said recent storms have been so prolific that this season’s snowfall to date has already matched the 286-inch record set by the same time last year.

“It’s pretty awesome,” Olmer said. “In the past week, we’ve had nine to 12 feet. It’s light and dry--snow at its very best.”

Farther south in the Sierra, Mammoth Mountain reported seven to 10 feet of new snow in the past week, 10 inches of it in the last 24 hours. “It’s incredible,” said skier Rayni Chase. “We’ve received so much snow in the past week I can’t believe it.”

Kaczmarek, whose Kansas firm provides weather information to The Times, attributed the unusually cold temperatures to a “fairly substantial” upper-level disturbance that has pushed the jet stream much farther south than normal, to the Southland and into Baja California.

“The farther north it is, the warmer it is [locally,]” he said. “But at this time, the jet stream wind flow is basically coming straight south from Canada.”

The result has been temperatures 10 to 20 degrees below the norm and that appear poised to break some records. While the Civic Center low of 46 degrees Sunday was far warmer than the date’s record low of 35 degrees, set in 1890, the high, at 55, hovered just above the 53 degree-mark that holds the record, set in 1913, for the chilliest high temperature for a Feb. 25.

So while the cold wave had only begun, Kaczmarek said, “There will probably be some record lows.”

The unusually harsh weather was cited in the disappearance Saturday morning of a New Zealand surfer who was lost in the dangerous waters off Ocean Beach near San Francisco. On Sunday, the U.S. Coast Guard and National Park Service continued the search for his body.

The 26-year-old man, whose name has not been released, was surfing with two friends off San Francisco’s westernmost beach, where the waves are unpredictable and the water is below 50 degrees this time of year. None of the three wore a wetsuit, and the missing man was clad only in black running shorts.

When the trio began struggling in the cold water, two of the surfers were rescued by onlookers but the third vanished beneath the waves.

“Ocean Beach is one of the most treacherous beaches in the world,” said Jay Eikenhorst, a National Park Service supervisory ranger. “People don’t realize how quickly the cold can sap your energy.”

Visitors from other parts of the world, even those familiar with big waves in their own countries, often underestimate the dangers of swimming in the area, Eikenhorst said.

Park rangers who patrol the region--which is part of the Golden Gate National Recreation Area--were searching beaches from San Francisco to Daly City for the body. The Coast Guard, which searched for the surfer Saturday, also was surveying beaches during routine flights over the area.

“This is a terrible tragedy and we should all learn from it,” Eikenhorst said. “You aren’t going to catch me in the Pacific in the winter.”

Contributing to this report were Times staff writers Greg Krikorian and Margaret Ramirez.