Dramatic video, radar show deadly lightning storm pound L.A. coast
A videotape and radar images show a lightning storm making its way through Catalina Island toward Venice Beach, where one person was killed and at least seven others were injured Sunday.
The video shows lightning striking near the island.
The beachfront in Venice was hit by at least four direct lightning strikes about 2:20 p.m., said Stuart Seto of the National Weather Service. A NWS map shows that the vast majority of the lightning strikes actually occurred on Catalina and in the Santa Monica Bay.
On Catalina Island, lightning struck a man and ignited several brush fires, authorities said. The unidentified 57-year-old man did not suffer life-threatening injuries in the strike and was listed in stable condition, said Sgt. Robert Berardi of the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department.
Lightning strikes also occurred in the South Bay, damaging one home and causing power outages.
Bill Patzert, a climatologist with the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory, said an intense high-pressure system pulled an unusual mass of hot, moist air from Mexico and the Gulf of California to the coastal areas, creating the unstable atmospheric conditions that produced the lightning. Normally, he said, those air masses travel no farther west than the high desert and mountains.
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