As Winter Enters, It’s a Lot Like Christmas

After a balmy week of summer-like warmth, the first day of winter dawned sharply cold in Los Angeles, ushering in an abrupt temperature drop and a chilly spell expected to last the week.

The frosty weather forced Angelenos to exchange their shorts and coconut oil for bulky jackets and gloves as residents scraped ice off their windshields and stamped their feet to stay warm.

But for many, it was the perfect start to a holiday week.

“It’s beautiful,” said Olivia Lucido, 34, breathing in the crisp morning air as she rode downtown’s Angels Flight to her job as a paralegal. “It finally feels like Christmas in California.”

A jet stream from Alaska and western Canada swept cold air across the region and dropped temperatures about 10 degrees below normal, said Jeff House, a meteorologist with WeatherData Inc., which provides forecasting services for The Times.

The high Monday at the downtown Civic Center was 55 degrees, the low 41. Overnight lows were expected drop to the 30s, prompting the National Weather Service to issue a freeze warning for the Los Angeles County valleys and Ventura County.

The chilly weather will linger through the week, House said, with temperatures slowly warming up to the low 60s by Christmas.

The freezing weather caused havoc in the mountains, as snow and ice closed the Golden State Freeway late Sunday night at Castaic Lake, stranding hundreds of northbound travelers.

Some motorists were at a standstill for more than 12 hours. Truck drivers passed the time watching television in their cabs, while others tried to catch traffic and weather bulletins on their radios. Early Monday, California Highway Patrol officers finally escorted vehicles in convoys of 500 along the glazed freeway.

A forecast of high winds and freezing temperatures suggests that closures could continue, CHP officials said.

“It’s totally up to the weather gods,” said CHP Officer Karen Faciane. “It’s cold enough. If we’ve got water up there, it’ll freeze. If not, we’ll be lucky.”

Although the arrival of nippy weather made some long for last week’s heat wave, others wondered at the fuss.

“Frozen toes are cold,” said Julie Hayward of England, who was shopping in Costa Mesa. “This is not cold.”

Besides, said Margaret De La Cruz, 57, “it gives you the feeling of winter and fireplaces and all the good memories of Christmas.”

Agreeing with the need for a little holiday ambience, Charles Thomas, 55, rubbed his arms as he walked along Hill Street in downtown Los Angeles and hoped aloud that it’s colder than this Christmas Day. None of that 85-degrees-people-wearing-shorts holiday. That’s not normal.”

For those without shelter, however, the chilling night air sparked a rush for cover, homeless service providers said.

On Sunday night, all 140 beds at L.A. Family Housing Corp.’s North Hollywood shelter were filled for the first time this year, said Joe Zuniga, program coordinator for the shelter.

“It took people by surprise, after the heat we had last week,” he said. “The cold weather has certainly brought in a lot of new, first-time clients.”

The Lankershim Boulevard facility is one of about 20 emergency shelters throughout the county that provide an extra 1,800 beds through March as part of a winter shelter program.

“I anticipate the cold will bring people in,” said Paul Rossi, program manager for the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority, which administers the emergency shelters. “Usually when it gets this cold, the beds fill up pretty quickly.”

The northern jet stream chilled temperatures across the state, causing snowfall and freezing weather that threatened harvests.

Temperatures dipped to 25 degrees in some parts of Ventura County early Monday, sending some farmers scrambling to protect their crops, especially citrus and avocados.

Many growers ran wind machines and installed heaters in their orchards to guard against frost.

“In a frost or a freeze, it’s the ice that does the damage,” said Bob Davis, an Ojai citrus rancher. “Within a matter of weeks, the fruit turns to straw. It just dries out.”

This week’s cold snap could bring Ventura County’s chilliest temperatures since December 1990. That’s when the mercury dipped to 15 degrees and destroyed 50% to 80% of crops in some areas.

In Fresno, a light snowfall Sunday night sparked fascination and fears.

Jeffrey Reid’s 6-year-old son had never seen snow before, so he was quickly out the door Monday morning to crunch together snowballs.

“It was pretty exciting,” said Reid, the city manager for Fresno. On Sunday night, “it just opened up, and there was an inch or so stuck to the ground [Monday morning]. The kids were out with the snowball fights, and people were just wandering around the neighborhoods in disbelief.”

But icy roads triggered about 70 accidents in the area--including two fatalities--and the weather could spell more trouble for hard-hit farmers.

“There’s going to be some real problems for the regional economy and the citrus growers because of the cold,” Reid said.

Even in the snow-dusted San Bernardino Mountains--where residents expect it to be cold--the locals were talking about the weather.

Overnight temperatures were 10 to 15 degrees chillier than normal. Between 2 and 4 inches of light, dry snow fell by Monday morning in the higher mountain elevations, adding a nice layer of powder to 2 feet or more of machine-groomed packed powder and hard-pack, the ski resorts reported.

“When I got into my car this morning, it was 11 degrees,” said Judy Bowers, who then headed to her job at the Big Bear Mountain Ski Resort. “I’ve got my long underwear on today.”

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Times staff writers Tom Gorman, David Haldane, Eric Lichtblau, Solomon Moore and David Reyes and correspondent Massie Ritsch contributed to this story.