May Showers Bring Snow, Record Cold to Southland

Just 39 days before the official start of summer, a “winter weather advisory” calling for up to a foot of snow in local mountains was issued by the National Weather Service on Tuesday as an unseasonably cold storm rolled into Southern California.

The persistent storm dumped unusually heavy rain on Orange and Los Angeles counties for this time of year. Forecasters said the damp, chilly weather should continue through today.

“It’s unusual, but it’s not unprecedented,” Tim McClung, a Weather Service meteorologist, said of the advisory. “In Southern California, nothing’s unprecedented.”

The weather contributed to a sharp increase in freeway accidents in Orange County, officials said, and caused power failures in several communities.

By 3:30 p.m., there were reports of 84 accidents, about double the number of the day before, California Highway Patrol Officer Mark Reeves said.

At least two accidents involving injuries tied up afternoon traffic, police said. Several lanes were closed on the Orange Freeway at Nutwood Avenue in Fullerton when a truck hit the center divider, knocking off chunks of concrete. And a multiple vehicle collision backed up traffic on Interstate 5 near Lake Forest.

Electrical service was cut in Costa Mesa at 12:35 p.m. after tree branches struck separate power lines on Limerick Drive and Garlingford Street, said Steve Hansen, a spokesman for Southern California Edison.

About 2,200 commercial and residential customers were affected in an area near South Coast Drive and Harbor Boulevard, Hansen said. Power was restored for all but 200 within an hour, he said. Though traffic signals went out, there were no serious accidents reported, police said.

In Santa Ana, 2,900 customers lost power for almost an hour in the afternoon because of an underground equipment failure, Hansen said.

More showers are expected across Orange County today, bringing as much as a quarter inch of rain, said Kevin Stenson, a meteorologist with WeatherData Inc., which provides forecasts for The Times. Isolated afternoon thunderstorms also are possible, he said.

Tuesday was the coolest May 12 on record in Los Angeles, with a high reading on the Civic Center thermometer of only 58 degrees. The coolest previous maximum reading was 61, in 1935. The normal high for the date is 74.

Although the El Nino meteorological phenomenon is waning, Stenson said, it still packs enough punch to split the storm track formed by high-altitude jet stream winds, with one branch following the usual track east across British Columbia and another swooping down the Pacific Coast toward Los Angeles.

The current storm traveled the Los Angeles branch, dropping 0.93 of an inch of rain on the Civic Center by 5 p.m. Tuesday, more than three times the usual amount for the entire month. That raised the downtown precipitation total for the season--which runs from July 1 through June 30--to 29.87 inches, more than double the normal total for the date of 14.68 inches.

As of 5 p.m. Tuesday, the total for May, with more than half the month still to go, was 2.01 inches, roughly six times the usual total for the month of about 0.3 inches.

The snow level in Southland mountains dipped below 5,000 feet Tuesday afternoon--and could drop an additional thousand feet or more before dawn today.

Genevieve Paquet, a spokeswoman for Snow Summit ski resort in the San Bernardino Mountains, said the snow that started falling at the 7,000-foot level there Tuesday afternoon was expected to continue through the night.

“Unfortunately, our ski season ended May 3,” she said. “Right now, we’re getting ready for a springtime bicycle race that’s scheduled for this weekend.”

The race probably will go on as scheduled at the Big Bear Lake resort, “but we may have to clear out a little snow in some places to do it,” Paquet said.

Forecasts called for 6 to 12 inches of snow by dawn today at levels above 5,000 feet.

Records on such things are hard to come by, but it was difficult to find anyone who could remember that much snow that low in May.

And Stenson said the storm would be slow to leave.

“It looks like there’ll be scattered showers, and perhaps an isolated thundershower or two,” today and possibly tonight.

The rain and snow are expected to stop--at least for a while--Thursday morning.

“We’re keeping our fingers crossed, but right now, it looks as though this storm should scoot out of Southern California by then,” Stenson said. But he said “another one lurking out there in the Gulf of Alaska” might bring more rain on Friday and Saturday.

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Times staff writer Roberto J. Manzano contributed to this report.