Storm Spawns Tornadoes, Worries; More Rain Coming

One storm had passed, another was imminent and Richard and Terri Bernstein were performing a familiar ritual in the Southland on Saturday: trying to stymie a river of mud and goo flowing across the driveway of their La Habra Heights home.

“I’m from Seattle and I’ve never seen anything like this before” -- even in her notoriously wet hometown, said Terri Bernstein, 44.

It’s as gloomy a winter as the area has seen in a long time -- and it’s not over yet.

Showers and heavy rains are predicted to begin this afternoon and continue into Presidents Day, according to National Weather Service forecasters.

The heavy rains Friday night and Saturday morning brought the season’s total so far to 28.22 inches in downtown Los Angeles.

This rainy season, which began July 1, is the seventh wettest since records were first kept by the National Weather Service in 1877, and it has already beaten Seattle’s annual average.

Storm-related damage affected much of the region as many residents awoke to mud-caked garages and yards on Saturday.

In the San Fernando Valley community of Sun Valley, a massive sinkhole gobbled up a section of Tujunga Avenue.

In Temecula, roof tiles were ripped from dozens of homes, fences were destroyed, trees were knocked down and car windows were impaled by branches when a tornado touched down Saturday morning, according to the Riverside County Sheriff’s Department.

A different tornado flattened a light pole and trees in Huntington Beach, a backed-up drain swamped eight homes in Long Beach and 7,000 homes lost power in Los Angeles because of downed lines, officials said.

The tornado, which apparently started offshore as a waterspout, came within about 100 yards of the Huntington Beach pier before shifting direction and moving ashore.

“This was the closest I’ve ever seen one come to the pier in all the 28 years I’ve worked here,” said Huntington Beach lifeguard Claude Panis, who watched the waterspout from a lifeguard tower on the pier.

“It was like somebody just turned on a hose. It was two hours of constant, heavy, monsoon rain,” said Katie Hanour, describing the scene along Laguna Canyon Road in Orange County.

The beauty salon where she works was deserted Saturday after the heavily traveled road between Laguna Beach and the San Diego Freeway was closed because of flooding and mudslides.

Fueling operations at Bob Hope Airport in Burbank were suspended briefly Friday night because of lightning, airport officials said.

About 3:30 a.m. Saturday, a storm drain apparently became plugged on West Arlington Street in Long Beach. The street quickly turned into a river, with three to four feet of muddy water pouring into homes before the water just as quickly receded, said Long Beach Fire Department Captain Jim Arvizu.

The homes were rendered uninhabitable, sending residents to either a Red Cross shelter or homes of friends and family.

“We’re going to get the house in shape and put it on the market,” said Jose Delamora, 27, whose house was swamped and who is headed for higher ground.

In Los Angeles, about 1,500 homes in South Los Angeles, Toluca Lake and scattered parts of the city remained without power early Saturday evening due to downed power lines, according to Gale Harris, a Department of Water and Power spokeswoman. Earlier in the day, another 4,000 homes had lost electricity to the storm.

A tour bus carrying deaf Chinese tourists collided with an SUV on the eastbound Ventura Freeway near Sherman Oaks on Saturday afternoon in what police said was possibly a weather-related accident.

Six bus passengers and four people in the SUV suffered minor injuries. Sign language experts were dispatched to area hospitals to help translate for the tourists.

Mudslides continued to threaten five homes in Culver City, a house in Diamond Bar and 13 residences in Orange County, according to local authorities.

A slow-moving slide in Laguna Beach spurred the evacuation of four homes on Saturday afternoon. One of the homes was declared uninhabitable by city officials after it partially collapsed.

“It sounded like somebody was chopping wood. I heard these popping noises and then you could see all the mud coming down [the hill],” said Kristine Turnier, who was visiting a family in one of the homes. “I heard a guy saying, ‘Oh, my God. Oh, my God,’ and then in five minutes all the police were here.”

A mudslide that spilled onto railroad tracks north of Moorpark on Friday caused Amtrak to cancel all commuter services from Los Angeles to Santa Barbara until at least this afternoon, said Vernae Graham, an Amtrak spokeswoman.

The MTA’s Green Line also suffered power outages throughout the day Saturday because of rain, officials said.

The rainfall was not as epic as the record storms that blasted Southern California in early January, but the precipitation was still impressive.

Downtown Los Angeles received 2.89 inches of rain since the latest storms swept into the area Thursday. Other totals for that period were 2.35 inches in Santa Barbara, 3.63 in Oxnard, 3.72 in Burbank and 8.49 inches at Opids Camp in the San Gabriel Mountains, traditionally one of the wettest spots in Southern California.

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In the 24-hour period ending at 4 p.m. Saturday, 9 inches of snow had fallen at Big Bear Mountain and 4 inches at Wrightwood.

From Friday night through midday Saturday, the storm featured unusually prolific displays of thunder and lightning, the result of storm clouds slamming into south-facing mountains.

“That storm last night was the first time that our dog jumped into bed with us -- this was a 75-pound retriever who was scared stiff,” said Richard Bernstein.

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Times staff writers Hector Becerra, Sara Lin, Patrick McGreevy, Stuart Pfeifer, Nicholas Shields and Doug Smith contributed to this report.