Summer Storm Slips Into Town

A rare summer monsoon sneaked in through Southern California’s back door Thursday, pummeling inland valleys with unseasonable rain and lightning before moving west into Los Angeles County and raising worries about flash floods in the mountains.

Lightning started fires, knocked out power and injured at least one man. Rain snarled traffic with fender-benders before the thunderstorm cells moved toward the sea, drenching eastern Los Angeles County and portions of Orange County.

Another line of thunderstorms is expected to push into the region today, but the skies are expected to clear this weekend, the National Weather Service said.

“We’re not talking about a disastrous event,” said Weather Service meteorologist Miguel Miller in San Diego. “But it is interesting.”

And problematic.

The Lake Mathews area, south of Riverside, received more than half an inch of rain, topping the total rainfall for all of July 2000 in half an hour.

More than 13,000 inland residents were without power for a while, including 4,000 in Fontana. Forecasters, fearful that lingering storms could swamp gulches in the San Gabriel Mountains, issued a flash-flood watch, but no extensive flooding was reported Thursday evening.

Lightning strikes wreaked havoc across the region, hitting one construction worker, who survived, and igniting palm trees, patches of dry brush and a furniture store in western San Bernardino County.

Police and fire officials scrambled to keep up.

“We weathered it,” said Mike Macias, a police detective in Ontario, where officials coped with a slew of minor accidents and blown transformers.

Though unusual in Southern California, the thunderstorms are common in the desert Southwest this time of year. Arizona, New Mexico and northern Mexico typically experience several muggy monsoons in the summer months, and periodically one of these storms sneaks west into California.

That’s what happened Thursday, Miller said, as a line of compact but fierce thunderstorms arrived about 10 a.m. in an arc that stretched from the Cajon Pass into Orange County. Those storms are known as monsoons--intense, regularly occurring, wind-fed summer storms that frequently hit certain parts of the world, such as northern Mexico and India, but occasionally stray into other areas.

The worst damage occurred in western stretches of the Inland Empire.

Just after 11 a.m. Thursday, lightning apparently struck an air conditioning unit atop a small furniture store on Holt Boulevard in Montclair.

“We heard this big blast and the building shook completely,” said Frank Navarro, a salesclerk.

Workers at the Encore Furniture Store tried to put out the blaze but were quickly overwhelmed. Fire crews from seven agencies had the blaze under control within two hours, and no one was injured.

In Rancho Cucamonga, a 33-year-old construction worker was injured when lightning struck a nearby cement mixer. Julio Resendis of San Bernardino, who had been pouring concrete for a new development north of Baseline Road, was thrown about five feet by the strike, but remained conscious. He was listed in good condition late Thursday at San Antonio Community Hospital in Upland.

In Orange County, where the weather pattern was milder, passing rain showers put tourists in a funk.

“We were looking for the white sands and blue water. Is that here?” said Sheila Carter, a tourist from Texas visiting the Newport Pier with her five children.

Damage from the storm in Orange County appeared slight, despite several more lightning strikes, including one that set a 60-foot palm tree in San Clemente ablaze.

Sue McDanel, 62, said she heard a “big loud crash” outside her Calle Juno home, ran outside and saw the fronds on her palm tree burning. Onlookers helped control the flames with a garden hose until firefighters arrived. The fire did not spread.

Ventura County and the San Fernando Valley sidestepped most of the nasty weather--but sunshine didn’t seem to placate everyone there, either.

First-time visitors from France, Mogdah Ravigne and her children Sami, 13, and Mona, 11, said they found the heat unbearable and needed to take refuge. They ended up at Lanark Pool in Canoga Park.

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Times staff writers Erin Park, Matthew Chin, Douglas Haberman, Selicia Kennedy-Ross, Matt Surman, Andrea Perera and Gene Maddaus contributed to this story.