Are New Winds Set to Hit Chatsworth?

Raucous winds again blasted across Los Angeles County Saturday, as more falling trees were reported and more than 100,000 electric customers remained without power from windstorms that started five days ago.

Although Chatsworth escaped the hurricane-like gusts Wednesday and Thursday, the National Weather Service (NWS) now says a more-traditional Santa Ana wind pattern is developing and is forecast to strike areas in the San Fernando Valley that are usually the windiest.

In the City of Los Angeles, about 1,000 customers of the Department of Water and Power's (DWP) 1.4 million customers remained without electricity by 9 p.m. Saturday. About 100 crews were to work around the clock to restore all power, Maychelle Yee, a spokeswoman for the DWP, told City News Service.

"Toward the final stages of restoration in an outage incident of this size and magnitude it is possible for a very small number of individual customers who are currently without power to have not been identified in our outage management system," Yee said in a statement. Individuals who are without power on a block where their immediate neighbors have power were urged to contact DWP by phone or by text at 800-342-5397.

Fire trucks were placed in Malibu, Calabasas and other fire-prone areas Saturday as winds were expected to shift, increasing the danger in areas largely spared by the destructive winds of earlier this week. The Los Angeles County fire department moved 290 additional firefighters and other resources into brush-fire-prone areas of western Los Angeles County.

By midmorning Saturday, wind gusts of 73 miles per hour were clocked atop a mountain near Acton. and 57 mph at a ranger station near Mount Wilson, as recorded by automated weather stations. Peak gusts of 46 mph were measured atop the Santa Monica Mountains above Malibu, and 36 mph at Santa Clarita.

Southern California Edison (SCE) crews, many working straight through for the third consecutive night, had restored service to all but 77,000 customer accounts still blacked out by 2 p.m. Saturday. Eleven hours earlier, at 3 a.m., about 103,000 SCE homes and businesses were without power, said Edison spokesman Gil Alexander.

The outages were largely along the San Gabriel Valley foothills east of Pasadena, where "near hurricane force winds" caused flying debris to knock over power poles, Alexander said.

In South Pasadena, a two-block section of Fremont Avenue was cordoned off as a staging area for SCE trucks being used to remove fallen trees and replaced splintered wooden poles, South Pasadena police announced.

Los Angeles firefighters say a tree fell on a house at midmorning Saturday on Monterey Road in El Sereno, and firefighters were also kept busy checking fresh reports of fallen DWP wires that turned out to have dropped three days ago, but were being called in Saturday by worried residents.

The NWS said a more-traditional Santa Ana wind pattern would develop, as a high pressure system builds over the Great Basin. That is opposed to Wednesday's unusual pattern, where a high pressure system that set records in Idaho squeezed 150 mph winds over the Sierra Nevada, barreling towards Southern California.

As the regional wind direction shifted to the northeast, humidity levels dropped into the danger level, prompting the county fire department to shift resources into the Santa Clarita and Malibu areas. Numerous fire trucks from southern L.A. County moved up Pacific Coast Highway.

High pressure conditions were expected to build over the Four Corners region through Sunday, the NWS said, and the dry Santa Ana winds will again develop Monday morning and persist into Tuesday.

Pasadena, one of several cities to declare a local emergency Thursday, reported that all its major streets were now accessible, as were most of its secondary streets. About 99 percent of Pasadena Water and Power customers had service restored Friday, City Manager Michael Beck said.     

Four people were injured in the storm, and 37 people were taken to a temporary shelter at the Robinson Park Recreation Center. All but one was relocated late Friday.

-- City News Service