Let it snow, let it snow
Saturday’s storm left a parting gift, dusting parts of La Crescenta, La Cañada and Burbank with snow and sending families streaming outdoors for some winter fun.
Joe Mohos and his two children, Chris, 8, and Cathy, 7, knelt on the Chandler Bikeway in Burbank scrapping together enough snow to form a small snowman. Mohos said he was startled to watch the rain turn to hail, and then soft white flakes as the day progressed.
“Why is everything white?” he asked himself.
Jet Propulsion Laboratory climatologist Bill Patzert described the snowfall in Burbank as a once-in-a-generation event. But overall, the weather was “more curiosity than catastrophe,” Patzert said.
“The problem was that the rain, instead of arriving with the cold front, arrived in front of the cold front,” Patzert said. “So we got a little treat here and there but we didn’t get the real deal. But it’s fun.”
In the foothills, streets that have been plagued by evacuations during the Station fire and subsequent debris flows came alive as parents and children staged neighborhood snowball fights. Goss Canyon Avenue resident John Kornarens, who described his small dead-end street as “ground zero” during the 2009 Station fire, said it snows in La Crescenta every couple of years but rarely sticks.
“We got snow last weekend but it wasn’t this much…Look at these beautiful fruit trees, they have snow on them,” he said gesturing to a grove of citrus trees dusted white.
His son, 13-year-old Stefan Kornarens, spent the afternoon throwing and dodging snowballs with his friends.
“It is pretty amazing,” Stefan said. “It is fun because we just get to run around and do crazy things…We tried to sled down the driveway but it didn’t really work.”
Denise Pearson, who has lived on Goss Canyon Avenue for 12 years, characterized snowfall in La Crescenta a “novelty.” She called family in the Midwest to report the exciting news, but got a muted response.
“It is not very often, it is every two of three years,” Pearson said. “It has been a while since we have had it stay on the ground. Last week we had it but it melted fast.”
The afternoon dusting followed on the heels of a strong rainstorm Friday night that dropped 2.4 inches of rain in the foothills and 1.2 inches in downtown Los Angeles, Patzert said. The most recent storm brought rainfall for the month of February to about average, he added.
Total rainfall for the 2010-11 storm season has reached 15.78 inches, slightly higher than the 15.1 yearly average, largely due to an unusually rainy December, he said.
The wet weather was expected to clear Sunday, but temperatures would remain chilly, Patzert said.
“All the fine dresses at the Oscars, [the movies stars] are definitely going to be wearing their LL Bean parkas on top of them.”
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