May Showers Bring Snow, Record Cold to Southland

Just 39 days before the official start of summer, a “winter weather advisory” calling for up to a foot of snow in local mountains was issued by the National Weather Service on Tuesday as an unseasonably cold storm rolled into Southern California.

The persistent storm dumped unusually heavy rain on Los Angeles for this time of year, and forecasters said the damp, chilly weather should continue through today.

“It’s unusual, but it’s not unprecedented,” Tim McClung, a Weather Service meteorologist, said of the advisory. “In Southern California, nothing’s unprecedented.”

Nonetheless, Tuesday was the coolest May 12 on record in Los Angeles, with a high reading on the Civic Center thermometer of only 58 degrees. The coolest previous maximum reading was 61, in 1935. The normal high for the date is 74.

Los Angeles is nearing the end of a rainfall season during which about twice the usual amount of precipitation has fallen, and this storm could be one of El Nino’s parting shots, according to Kevin Stenson, a meteorologist with WeatherData Inc., which provides forecasts for The Times.

Stenson said that although the meteorological phenomenon is waning, it still packs enough punch to split the storm track formed by high-altitude jet stream winds, with one branch following the usual track east across British Columbia and another swooping down the Pacific Coast toward Los Angeles.

The current storm traveled the Los Angeles branch, dropping 0.93 of an inch of rain on the Civic Center by 5 p.m. Tuesday, more than three times the usual amount for the entire month. That raised the downtown precipitation total for the season--which runs from July 1 through June 30--to 29.87 inches, more than double the normal total for the date of 14.68 inches.

As of 5 p.m. Tuesday, the total for May, with more than half the month still to go--was 2.01 inches, roughly six times the usual total for the month of about 0.3 inches.

The snow level in Southland mountains dipped below 5,000 feet Tuesday afternoon--and could drop an additional thousand feet or more before dawn today.

Genevieve Paquet, a spokeswoman for Snow Summit ski resort in the San Bernardino Mountains, said the snow that started falling at the 7,000-foot level there Tuesday afternoon was expected to continue through the night.

“Unfortunately, our ski season ended May 3,” she said. “Right now, we’re getting ready for a springtime bicycle race that’s scheduled for this weekend.”

The race probably will go on as scheduled at the Big Bear Lake resort, “but we may have to clear out a little snow in some places to do it,” Paquet said. “Snow this late is not typical spring weather up here.”

Forecasts called for 6 to 12 inches of snow by dawn today at levels above 5,000 feet.

Records on such things are hard to come by, but it was difficult to find anyone who could remember that much snow that low in May.

“It’s definitely an oddity,” the Weather Service’s McClung said. “Everyone’s calling us about it. We’ll be glad when all this is over.”

They may have to wait a while.

“This storm’s going to be slow to leave,” Stenson said Tuesday afternoon. “It looks like there’ll be scattered showers, and perhaps an isolated thundershower or two, on Wednesday and possibly Wednesday night.”

The rain and snow are expected to stop--at least for a while--Thursday morning, Stenson said.

“We’re keeping our fingers crossed, but right now, it looks as though this storm should scoot out of Southern California by then,” he said. “On the other hand, there’s another one lurking out there in the Gulf of Alaska, and there’s a slight chance of some more precipitation from that one on Friday and Saturday.”

(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX / INFOGRAPHIC)

Storm Track

The current storm dropped 0.93 of an inch of rain on the Civic Center by 5 p.m. Tuesday, bringing the May total to more than 2 inches--roughly six times the month’s average.

May average: .295”

May ‘97: 0”

May ’98 thru Tuesday: 2.01”

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JET STREAM IN MAY

Unusual southern branch

Normal pattern

Source: National Weather Service