Whiteouts in the Tehachapi Mountains. Flooding in and around Los Angeles and record rainfall across the Central Valley. Snow in places that had not seen it for decades,
The New York Times reports.
The sheets of precipitation that lashed Central and Southern California on Friday presented a vivid contrast to the sun-drenched images associated with the state. And more bad weather was in store: The storm system was forecast to linger through Saturday morning before moving inland.
As dawn approached, a flash flood warning for the cities of Los Angeles, Glendale and Santa Clarita was in effect, along with a smattering of winter weather advisories further north along the coast. Hundreds of thousands of Californians were under a “freeze” warning.
“This is definitely rare,” Kristen Stewart, a meteorologist with the Weather Service in Los Angeles, said of the weather late Friday night.
It was dangerous, too.
In Los Angeles County, there was heavy flooding on Friday, and intense rain and high winds rattled residents late into the night. One person died after a vehicle drove off the road and into a flood control area, although it was not immediately clear if the death was related to the storm, said Kerjon Lee of Los Angeles County Public Works.
And at elevations above 2,000 feet, the storm was a true blizzard, forcing the closing of two crucial arteries linking Southern California to the rest of the state through crossings in the Tehachapi Mountains at elevations of about 4,000 feet. Both roads, Interstate 5 and Highway 58, were closed for hours on Friday after receiving several inches of snow.
“It basically shut down any type of travel into Southern California,” Bill South, a Weather Service meteorologist in the Central Valley, said in a telephone interview before dawn on Saturday. “There is a highway along the coast, but that adds a good four to six hours on your trip.”
Meteorologists expected additional snow in the mountains on Saturday, along with thunderstorms in lower elevations that could flood more roads and produce hail, tornadoes and power outages. About 30,000 customers in Los Angeles already had no electricity as of late Friday.
Warnings of possible blizzard conditions — meaning winds above 35 miles an hour, considerable snowfall and drastically reduced visibility — were scheduled to be in place until late Saturday afternoon for the mountains of Los Angeles, Ventura, Santa Barbara and San Bernardino Counties.
