Storm Brings Steady Rain Then Veers North

Despite fender benders and gloom, Los Angeles on Tuesday was spared the drenching that forecasters had been predicting, thanks to an unexpected northward shift in the storm center.

With steady afternoon rain in the San Fernando Valley, intermittent sprinkles in downtown Los Angeles and gusts in the mountains, the day turned out to be little more than dreary, messy and drizzly.

And by rush hour this morning, even that little bit of rain was expected to be gone, said Jeff House, a meteorologist with WeatherData Inc., which provides forecasts for The Times.

Instead of the 1 inch of rain that had been forecast for Tuesday, House said Los Angeles would receive a quarter of an inch to half an inch by the end of the day.

Authorities said the rain produced a rash of fender benders, none serious. Two men suffered minor injuries Tuesday morning when a trash truck fishtailed on the wet pavement and collided with a big rig on the Osborne Street onramp of the Golden State Freeway. The trash truck driver was trapped in his overturned vehicle for 20 minutes.

In another incident, a driver lost control of his car about 1:30 p.m. in the 15000 block of West Parthenia Street at Noble Avenue and ended up in a flood control channel. The car was partially submerged in the riverlike waters. No one was injured.

In the mountain areas, the rain will continue this morning with highs in the 30s and lows in the teens. Down on level ground, morning commuters will see partly cloudy skies with wind gusts up to 30 mph. The highs are expected to vary between the mid-50s to the mid-60s, with the lows in the mid-40s tonight.

As dreary as the weather was in Southern California, northerners would gladly have traded.

Pounding rain pushed rivers to the limit and wind knocked out power to thousands Tuesday in the region’s biggest storm since El Nino.

Gusty winds up to 60 mph caused some of the biggest problems, uprooting trees and collapsing a three-story scaffold onto six parked cars in San Francisco. The California Highway Patrol reported 116 accidents--none causing death or serious injury--in the San Francisco Bay Area from midnight to dawn Tuesday, more than twice the number on a normal day. Power was cut to 55,000 Pacific Gas & Electric customers in a service area that runs from the Oregon state line to Bakersfield, PG&E; spokesman Bill Roake said.

Times staff writer Agnes Diggs contributed to this story.