Storm, Packing a Puny Punch, Has Foothill Residents Relieved

Except for a few ragged gray clouds and a cloak of mist clinging to the mountain peaks, residents of San Bernardino County’s foothill neighborhoods awoke Tuesday to find scant evidence that a storm had passed through the night before.

County officials had issued flash flood and winter weather warnings Monday night as a strong Pacific front marched inland, but the inches of rain and feet of snow forecasters predicted failed to materialize -- along with the mudslides and floods they might have triggered in areas ravaged by last year’s wildfires.

“It was way below what they were forecasting,” said Stan Wasowski of the National Weather Service. “It dropped a lot of rain, but, darn it, the thing moved so fast that the totals didn’t get very high.”

Nearly 1 1/2 inches of rain fell on the muddy slopes of the San Gabriel Mountains above Rancho Cucamonga, but the storm dropped less than an inch of rain across most of San Bernardino, Los Angeles and Orange counties.

There was snow as low as about 4,000 feet, and 7 inches accumulated at the Big Bear ski area in the San Bernardino Mountains.

In December, a powerful storm triggered a series of flash floods that killed 15 people at campgrounds in the San Bernardino foothills on Christmas Day, and buried some residential neighborhoods in waist-high mudflows.

Lytle Creek, a mountain community tucked into a fire-scarred canyon west of the Cajon Pass, was spared any flooding after Monday night’s heavy rains.

Rebecca Hughes, who owns the Bonita Ranch RV Campground, moved most of her tenants away from the blackened hillside Monday as a precaution, and allowed them back Tuesday after she determined that the hill hadn’t moved.

“I think we are going to be OK,” she said, though she added that she may build a retaining wall.

Since December’s tragedies, Lytle Creek residents have been fortifying their homes and streets with sandbags, provided free of charge by fire officials at several street-side locations.

San Bernardino County public works crews have been clearing debris from storm drains, culverts and drainage ditches, where rain could overflow. County officials said they received no reports of damage resulting from the rainfall, and added that debris basins and flood-control channels remained clear Tuesday.

“With everyone doing their part, I think it has paid off,” said Tracey Martinez, a spokeswoman for the San Bernardino County Fire Department. “We’ve been very blessed.”

Nonetheless, a 16-man crew from the San Bernardino County Jail showed up at the Devore fire station just after 7 a.m. Tuesday to resume shoveling sand into sandbags the county was providing for residents.

“There were only 10 left when we got here,” said Capt. Jon McLinn, who was supervising the work.

Nearby, on Greenwood Avenue, one of the hardest-hit streets in the Christmas flooding, Cathleen Wagner spent the morning tending her palomino horse instead of shoveling mud out of her yard.

“We had the horse trailer hooked up and ready to go,” said Wagner, 43. She said she had no plans to move the makeshift wall of sandbags that stands at the end of her driveway.

“It’s not over yet,” she said. “We’re leaving it all there at least until May.”