Southland Weathers Latest Pacific Storm

A Pacific storm, coupled with colder than average temperatures, blanketed Southern California Wednesday in rain and snow, wreaking havoc on roads, pushing homeless shelters to their limits and turning channels into perilous torrents.

While the sometimes heavy showers were not blamed for any fatal accidents, they kept law enforcement agencies and emergency crews busy throughout the region responding to multi-car collisions or readying themselves for rescues along streets, creeks and man-made channels.

“We have had [freeway] accidents on the 5, on the 60, the 210, the 710, the 91,” Los Angeles County Firefighter Nancy Stroud said in the afternoon. “You pick a freeway and we have had an accident on it.”

Los Angeles City Fire Department spokesman Brian Humphrey said the number of accidents in the city was relatively low for a storm--about four per hour compared to as many as a dozen during some previous winter rainstorms. But Humphrey said fire crews were still keeping busy and that swift-water rescue teams had been deployed to creeks and channels posing the greatest risk of danger to passersby.

“People romanticize the idea of watching water run through the creek, but we’re reminding [them] the water in these areas can move at diabolical speeds,” approaching 45 mph, Humphrey said. “And even a strapping, physically fit individual would have trouble standing in water that is at mid-calf. And if it gets to your knees, forget it. That’s it.”

Rescue teams, he said, were stationed at four sites--West Los Angeles, Van Nuys, Studio City and Mt. Washington--along the 470 miles of open channels that include the Los Angeles River.

The soggy--and cold--weather also spelled greater misery for those who do not drive the streets but try to survive on them. Hundreds of homeless people flocked to armories and other shelters, straining already limited resources.

“Everyone’s up to capacity,” said Melanie Singer, program manager for the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority, a city-county agency which offers 2,400 beds throughout the county.

Many of the shelters, however, are open only at night, leaving their clients to seek warmth elsewhere throughout the day. “They go into hallways and doors, under buildings, in alleys with awnings, into public places, libraries--as many people as there are, that’s how many creative ideas they have,” Singer said.

The rains that fell on Southern California were brought by the front of a winter storm system that came across the Pacific Ocean and was expected to move into northern Baja California by this afternoon said meteorologist Curtis Brack of WeatherData Inc., the Wichita, Kan., firm that provides weather data to The Times.

The showers, including some thunderstorms, were expected to end by this evening with decreasing clouds and no rain forecast for Friday or the weekend, Brack said. “By Friday morning . . . it will definitely be dry.”

The storm brought moderate rainfall to most parts of Los Angeles and Orange counties. Between 4 p.m. Tuesday and 4 p.m. Wednesday, the Los Angeles Civic Center reported one inch of rain, Montebello received 1.24 inches, Torrance Airport got 1.44 inches and Pasadena got 1.01 inches. The temperature at the Civic Center hit a high of 55 degrees, 13 degrees below the normal for the date, and in Santa Ana, the high was 58 compared to a normal high of 67.

Coming on the heels of another winter storm, the rains were accompanied by colder temperatures that helped bring snow levels to some high desert areas including Lancaster, Palmdale and Mojave. Snow was reported as low as 3,000 feet, Brack said.

On snow-swaddled Mt. Baldy, fun-seekers toted snowshoes, sleds, inner tubes--almost every imaginable means of transport on a coat of snow that fell soft as confectioner’s sugar.

The most unreliable method for getting around proved to be cars, which slipped and slid on the slushy mountain road and forced drivers to dig out seldom-used tire chains or turn back.

Albert Guerrero and Jeremy Barrow found the chains as cooperative as a coil of snakes as they wrestled with the devices near the top of the mountain--well past the point where chains were required.

“We’ve just never put them on before,” Barrow said. With luck, the pair planned an afternoon of sledding on the steep slopes just up the road.

The storm provided plenty of snow across the San Gabriel Mountains, forcing the closure of Highway 39 to Crystal Lake for much of Wednesday, U.S. Forest Service officials said.

And in the Antelope Valley, snow frosted the trees and blanketed the streets in drifts of up to several inches, catching residents by surprise.

“This morning we were hit hard by a rush on tire chains,” said Alan Thies, assistant manager at the Pep Boys automotive store in Lancaster. “We weren’t expecting this storm.”

Heavy snow forced the CHP to close Interstate 5 in the Tejon Pass and the Grapevine from 4 a.m. to 10 a.m. Two flight schools based at Fox Airfield in Lancaster also canceled classes.

And teenagers in the Antelope Valley Union High School District got a break when administrators sent students home shortly after noon because of the inclement weather.

“We’ve lived here 10 years and the snow is still fun for us,” said Mary Conklin, 14, a freshman busy throwing snowballs at her older sister in a field across from their Lancaster home.

Throughout Los Angeles County, CHP officers logged more than 300 freeway accidents in eight hours Wednesday morning during the height of the rain, including about 90 during the morning rush hour, a greater volume than usual but moderate for rainy days, officials said.

“Basically it wasn’t that bad on the freeways,” said CHP Officer Rhett Price. “On a normal day, we have an average of 35 to 40 accidents [during the morning rush hour]. So this is about double, which is to be expected” in a storm.

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As the storm swept across the San Gabriel Valley, it dumped plenty of rain on city streets, turning gutters into small streams. But no serious flooding was reported.

“We’ve had a heavy downpour here and some intersections are flooding in Altadena, but it’s nothing major,” said Dennis Morefield of the county Public Works Department.

In Malibu, the mudslides and flooded roadways that typically accompany a strong winter storm failed to materialize. By midday, only a few scattered clouds hung in the sky as brilliant light from the sun glistened on the coastline.

But disaster-wary city officials remained cautious: they worried about saturated hillsides giving way, particularly in areas where the land had been laid bare by October’s fires.

“With all the rain we have, the potential for problems is there big-time,” said Richard Calvin, the city’s maintenance manager. “You never know with saturated hillsides. They can go at any time.”

Times staff writers Duke Helfand, Henry Chu, Frank B. Williams and correspondents Richard Winton, John Cox and Greg Sandoval contributed to this story.