Rain From Icy Storm Snarls L.A.-Area Traffic

A cold and troublesome storm slammed into Southern California early Monday, dumping rain that snarled traffic in the Los Angeles Basin and snow that blocked Interstate 5 for several hours, whitening Bakersfield for the first time in almost 25 years.

The unsettled weather, which produced scattered thunderstorms and a funnel cloud that dipped to within 100 feet of the water off Laguna Beach, was expected to continue today, with a likelihood of scattered morning and afternoon showers before skies start clearing sometime tonight.

Southland rainfall totals generally were moderate Monday, with 0.77 of an inch reported in Burbank, 0.72 in Glendale, 0.42 in Long Beach and just 0.37 at the Civic Center.

That was enough, however, to tangle the Monday morning commute and trigger dozens of traffic accidents, including one that left part of a jackknifed big rig dangling from an overpass on the Golden State Freeway near Elysian Park.

Farther north on I-5 the problem was snow, which blocked a 40-mile stretch of the state’s principal north-south artery. Snow up to eight inches deep forced closure of the interstate through the Tehachapi Mountains about 8 a.m. Monday.

“I’ll just have to call my employer and tell him I’m stuck,” Bruce Petereit, a construction company employee, said as he sipped coffee with dozens of others stranded at a truck stop in Grapevine, just north of Gorman.

Petereit and the others finally resumed their journeys about 11 a.m., when plows finished clearing the pavement and the California Highway Patrol reopened I-5 between Castaic Junction and Laval Road.

Other routes through the Tehachapis that were temporarily blocked by snow included California 166 between Cuyama and Maricopa and California 58 between Mojave and Tehachapi.

Six inches of snow fell on Bakersfield, prompting a rash of snowball fights and the sculpting of hundreds of snowmen. Officials said it was the first measurable snowfall in the city since March 8, 1974. Kern County officials closed 150 schools, apparently as much to let schoolchildren frolic as because of the travel difficulties.

By midmorning, the precipitation in Bakersfield had changed to rain, and the snow turned to slush. Meadows Field, the principal airport in Bakersfield, reported 1.37 inches of rain, more than twice the record for the date set in 1952.

A foot of snow fell in Rose Valley, north of Ojai, with as much as 18 inches on Mt. Pinos, said Joe Pasinato, a spokesman for Los Padres National Forest.

Light snow fell as low as 3,000 feet in the San Gabriel Mountains above Los Angeles, with as much as 6 inches piling up at resort levels above 5,000 feet.

Snow continued to fall Monday afternoon in the San Bernardino Mountains, and Todd Morris, a National Weather Service forecaster, said that as much as a foot could accumulate there above 7,000 feet by dawn today.

“It’s been snowing all day,” Gen Paquet, a spokeswoman for the Snow Summit ski resort above Big Bear Lake, said Monday afternoon. “Winter has returned!”

Chains were required on most mountain roads above 5,000 feet on Monday, and morning commuters found the rain-washed roads almost as slippery in the urban areas of Los Angeles and Orange counties.

Dozens of fender-benders were reported in the San Fernando Valley, and crashes prompted SigAlerts in Laguna Canyon and Fountain Valley. The CHP said there were at least 56 traffic accidents in Orange County between 2 and 9 a.m.

Forecasters said a second storm, expected to hit Southern California sometime this morning, should be just as cold as Monday’s, with snow expected as low as 3,500 feet in the Tehachapi, San Gabriel and San Bernardino mountains.

The second storm won’t carry as much moisture as the first, though. Jeff House, a meteorologist with WeatherData Inc., which provides forecasts for The Times, said today’s rain showers in the Los Angeles Basin probably will be lighter and more scattered than Monday’s.

House said the twin storms were propelled toward Southern California by high-altitude jet stream winds dipping south from the coast of Washington.

Times staff writer H.G. Reza in Orange County, staff writer Michael Luo in the San Fernando Valley and correspondent Anne Gorman in Ventura contributed to this story.