A Beautiful Day in L.A.

Sean Hoss lives atop Mt. Wilson, so he knows a good view when he sees one. On Friday, he saw one.

“Sparkling clear,” Hoss gushed from his perch at the Mt. Wilson Observatory in the San Gabriel Mountains. “It’s the best I’ve seen it in months. You can see the beach at Long Beach--it’s that clear.”

You didn’t need to be on top of any mountain to notice the same thing. Following the roller-coaster weather rhythms that make living in Southern California such a treat, the aftermath of the region’s latest soaking was its opposite--a gloriously crystalline day.

It was a day where you could see up to 100 miles, and the colors--the blue of the sky, the greens of the trees--were as pure and unshaded as if painted by children. Landlocked streets with names like Ocean View lived up to their billing, and residents like Genny Vaught and her husband found the vistas so intoxicating they drove around half the day simply to gaze.

The views may not have set any records--one La Canada Flintridge resident with a vista to the sea scored it a mere 7 out of 10--but the sunny skies and cleansing breezes were reminders of the best side of the drenching winter storms: It sure feels good when they stop.

That relief may be short-lived. Forecasters said that by this afternoon, a frontal system associated with a storm centered well to the north is expected to start spreading clouds over Southern California, with rain starting in Los Angeles shortly after nightfall.

John Sherwin, a meteorologist with WeatherData Inc., which provides forecasts for The Times, said the city could receive half an inch to an inch of rain before skies clear again on Sunday afternoon.

But words of rain seemed like distant predictions to those soaking up Friday’s rays.

Cecil Haynes sat on the Santa Monica Pier, munching a hamburger and exulting in the view of the Santa Monica Mountains and the Malibu coastline. He had moved up a trip from his home in Fresno to clear up a traffic ticket in the Santa Monica courthouse because the day had dawned so beautifully. Now Haynes was enjoying the visual payoff.

“Just the colors--they make you appreciate life and what you take for granted,” said Haynes, 41, a painting contractor.

In Monrovia, where summertime smog can sometimes obscure the mountain range looming above, the San Gabriels provided a postcard backdrop, clothed in green and sugared with the previous night’s snow.

“The mountains seem a lot closer today. Sometimes they seem farther away because of the air,” said Paul Mushik, a house-builder who made use of the break in the recent string of rains to tinker with his truck.

Science confirmed what common sense indicated--the air was clean. “This is as good as it gets in Southern California,” said Bill Kelly, spokesman for the South Coast Air Quality Management District.

Some cloudiness kept visibility at about 30 miles at Brackett Airport in La Verne--short of perfect but still at least twice the average range.

Views were certainly above average from the hilly vantage of Ocean View Boulevard in the foothill city of La Canada Flintridge. From the right spot, you could make out the streets of downtown Los Angeles, high-rise office buildings in Long Beach, the hump of Santa Catalina Island and a somewhat hazy-looking Pacific Ocean.

One of those view spots happens to be the backyard of Casey and Carol Mollett.

“I’m very spoiled,” said Carol Mollett.

Perhaps for that reason, she seemed less than awe-struck by the views provided by Friday’s clear skies. A day deserving a perfect score of 10 would have offered the sight of ships off the coast and a clear shot of the Vincent Thomas Bridge between Terminal Island and San Pedro, she said.

But Mollett became downright ebullient on the topic of the wintertime weather cycles. She looks forward to the rain and the window on nature that seems to open afterward.

“I love the rain. It just washes everything. The greens are greener. The leaves are greener. The grass is greener,” she said. “To me, it’s a great cleansing. But then again, I’m on a hill--I don’t flood.”

At the coast in Palos Verdes, the view seemed to sweep forever south, past snow-capped Santiago Peak to the headlands in Camp Pendleton. To the north, the towers of downtown Los Angeles rose above a sprawl of palms.

Glenn and Genny Vaught came to a park above Point Fermin in San Pedro just for the view. The Huntington Beach retirees set off after breakfast with no plans but to enjoy the sun and clear air.

“We started out at McDonald’s,” said Genny Vaught, 73. “And then we just kept driving.”

Glenn Vaught, 72, sat on the steps of the Korean Friendship Bell, clutching his cane and gazing out at a view of Catalina that was so clear one could make out its oak trees and rain-eroded ravines.

In the basin, it was a day when oxalis flowers burned bright on roadsides, when long-lost mountain backdrops reemerged from the haze, when even freeway concrete twinkled in the sun.

Some onlookers said the day was more spectacular because it followed days of stormy gray. Ray Wiese, 57, was shooting landscape photos at Point Fermin. “It would be awful boring if it was paradise every day,” said Wiese.

The denizens of snow-capped Mt. Wilson don’t have to worry about any such environmental ennui, though. They were already figuring the hours until the mountain crest was plunged again into winter gloom.

“We get the extreme,” said Lu Rarogiewicz, a weather observer who lives on the mountain. “It’s either gorgeous beautiful or foggy, sloppy and miserable.”

Times staff writer Eric Malnic and correspondent Richard Winton contributed to this story.