Storm Soaks the Southland

A sluggish but powerful spring storm that stalled over Ventura County dumped nearly 5 inches of rain on mountains near Ojai by late Monday and pushed seasonal precipitation totals well above normal in most area locations.

Cloudy to partly cloudy skies are expected today and Wednesday before another weather system brings the chance of more rain late Wednesday, Thursday and Friday.

The National Weather Service forecast calls for some clouds, but no rain, for Easter Sunday. And a third storm is expected to arrive in about a week.

“It was an unusually strong April storm,” said meteorologist David Gomberg of the weather service in Oxnard. “And we’ve got a couple more of these minor systems coming through in the next week.”

While Nordhoff Peak received about 5 inches of rain during the two-day storm, Simi Valley and Thousand Oaks got more than an inch and two-thirds of an inch fell on the County Government Center in Ventura.

Normal rainfall for April in most county locations is only about 1 1/2 inches, Gomberg said. But in this rainy season, the wettest since the El Nino year of 1998, totals are already surpassing monthly and seasonal norms.

At the County Government Center, for example, the rainfall total is 17.5 inches, about 118% of normal, while only 6 inches were recorded last year.

No major problems were caused by the rain, Ventura County officials said.

But in the Los Angeles Basin, slippery pavement tripled the usual number of fender-benders Monday morning, though no major injuries were reported. One of the worst accidents involved a big-rig that overturned on the Golden State Freeway in the San Fernando Valley, tying up lanes in both directions for several hours.

Water that pooled because of a plugged drain caused the collapse of part of a roof at an industrial complex in Santa Ana. There were no injuries, but about 30 employees were evacuated.

The storm was relatively warm, and snow didn’t begin falling at resort levels in the San Gabriel and San Bernardino mountains until Monday night.

That didn’t matter much to ski resort operators, most of whom already have closed for the year. And for people like Joe Terrell, a clerk at the San Bernardino County sheriff’s station at Big Bear Lake, the less snow, the better.

“It’s been raining up here, and for me that’s just fine,” he said Monday afternoon. “I’m ready for spring.”

But snow levels Monday night were expected to drop as low as 4,500 feet, according to the weather service.

More than an inch of rain fell Monday in several communities in the Los Angeles metropolitan area. Totals at nightfall included 1.52 inches in Northridge, 1.37 in Glendale, 1.45 in Simi Valley and 1.27 in Altadena.