Four more days of rain expected

Rain is expected throughout Southern California through Wednesday, but so far forecasters say it is not expected to trigger mudslides in areas burned by recent wildfires.

The Saturday showers brought scattered road closures and power outages, and may have contributed to several traffic accidents still under investigation.

“We’re having several days of precipitation, mostly a lot of moisture in the air, so we’re having lingering showers off and on,” said Bonnie Bartling, a weather specialist at the National Weather Service in Oxnard.

She added that the absence of heavy downpours meant there was no particular threat to “the recent burn areas, as far as debris flows.”

Another storm system is en route.

“We’re in a rainy pattern right now,” Bartling said. “We’ll be getting precipitation at least through Wednesday.”

The storm is expected to bring some winter chill by Southern California standards, with temperatures in the 50s on Tuesday.

“We might get a few inches of snow in the mountains,” Bartling said.

Rainfall totals are still below normal, Bartling said.

From Jan. 1 through midnight Friday, 0.34 of an inch of rain had fallen in downtown Los Angeles; the normal amount of precipitation for that period is 2.47 inches, according to weather service statistics.

And since July 1, there has been 5.0 inches of rain downtown, compared with the typical 6.26 inches.

While the limited rain allowed residents in the fire burn areas to breathe a sigh of relief, the precipitation caused slick and hazardous conditions on many Los Angeles-area roadways.

California Highway Patrol officials were investigating whether rain may have played a role in the death of a 29-year-old North Hollywood woman, who was struck by a motorist and killed as she tried to walk across several lanes of the northbound 405 Freeway.

The woman, whose name was being withheld until her relatives could be notified, had been a driver in an injury collision on the right shoulder of the freeway while it rained about 12:30 a.m., CHP officials said. It wasn’t clear why she had tried to cross the traffic lanes.

In Downey, a man was killed in a crash involving at least two vehicles, CHP officials said. The accident was reported at 6:23 a.m. on the southbound 605 Freeway, just south of Florence Avenue, and several lanes were temporarily closed.

“Weather conditions will be taken into consideration,” said CHP officer Francisco Villalobos. “We don’t know whether it was raining.”

To help drivers avoid possible flooding, the California Department of Transportation on Friday night shut down the eastbound onramp to the 105 Freeway from southbound Sepulveda Boulevard, at Los Angeles International Airport.

“In the past it has been known to flood,” said Katherine Alvarado, a spokeswoman for LAX.

Power was knocked out to about 1,500 Westchester homes after a tree fell on lines during steady rain about 8:30 a.m., said Carol Tucker, a spokeswoman for the Department of Power and Water.

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