Rain season trickles in
The rainy season announced its return yesterday with a steady downpour that soaked La Cañada Flintridge streets. Fortunately, no rain damage had been reported to the Crescenta Valley Sheriff’s Station as of late afternoon, though several traffic collisions on the 2 and 210 freeways were attributed by Sheriff’s deputies and California Highway Patrol officers to excessive speed on the wet roads.
No flooding or mudslides were expected, according to Sgt. Randy Tuinstra of the CV Sheriff’s station.
“Everything has been very good so far,” said Tuinstra. “All the catch basins are doing their jobs.”
Between a half-inch and an inch of rain had fallen locally as of presstime, according to multiple sources.
Jamie Bray of Descanso Gardens said that there didn’t appear to be any rain-caused problems there.
“In terms of any rain damage, we haven’t seen anything yet,” Bray said. “When the sun comes out we’ll go look at stuff and see if there’s anything out there, but so far, so good.”
Tuinstra said that if rains became heavier, deputies would head up to the no parking zones installed in flood-risk areas on Ocean View Boulevard and warn residents to move their cars before enforcing the tow-away zone.
“Today it was raining pretty good but I don’t think it was at the point where we needed to be concerned with having people not park in those spots,” said Tuinstra.
While there was no direct damage from the rain, Sgt. Marcy Rangel of the Altadena CHP office said that there had been numerous traffic accidents on the local freeways since the rain started.
Both the 210 and the 2 freeways saw at least two accidents as of midday Wednesday, according to the CHP traffic incident website, and Rangel said that information was still be being gathered on accidents that had occurred throughout the day. Information on potential injuries remained unavailable.
Tuinstra said drivers should slow down, especially after the first rains of the season.
“It gets all that grease and oil up off the road, just makes it very, very slippery. People think they can still drive as they would normally do in dry weather and it just doesn’t work out that way,” said Tuinstra.