Storm Drops More Than Half-Inch of Rain on Chatsworth

Heavy rain and light Sunday traffic combined for some spectacular traffic crashes, as a major early-winter storm swept in from the Pacific Ocean, dumped more than a half-inch of rain on Chatsworth, and triggered flood advisories for creeks and canyons near the Station Fire burn zone.

By noon, 1.02 inches of rain had fallen at Sepulveda Pass, and city firefighters were checking reports that some mud and water was flowing from the San Diego Freeway widening project into backyards.

Heavy rain in the San Fernando Valley by midday had triggered at least 15 traffic crashes blamed on wet pavement, which included a truck that fell from the Golden State Freeway onto a city street in Mission Hills, said CHP Officer Ed Jacobs. That nasty crash was on the ramp from the northbound 5 to the eastbound Ronald Reagan Freeway, and was reported to the CHP at 11:06 a.m.

The truck went over a bridge, overturned on Laurel Canyon Boulevard at Paxton Street, and hit a power pole, Jacobs said. The driver walked away with minor injuries.

"The driver was just driving too fast in rainy weather," said Jacobs.

At mountain elevations above 4,500 feet, as much as 7 inches of snow was expected to fall, the National Weather Service (NWS) predicted. And the snow level could drop to just 4,000 feet by nightfall, prompting meterorologists and Caltrans dispatchers to keep a wary eye on temperatures along the 5 Freeway at 4,140-foot-high Tejon Summit.

At noon, it was 37 degrees and snow was falling at the Sandberg weather station, just east of the Grapevine. The CHP did not report any snow sticking to the freeway, but snowplows were called out on county roads west of Frazier Park.

By midday, the heaviest rain was moving in from Ventura County, and NWS radar spotted moderate or heavy rain across the western third of Los Angeles County.

Heaviest rains were focused in the mountains from Sepulveda Pass west,
including above Malibu, where 1.26 inches of rain had fallen by 3 p.m. at a
fire station in upper Trancas Canyon. At the Rocketdyne test center west of
Chatsworth, .59 inches was reported, and .81 had arrived at Northridge.

The NWS issued an advisory for possible flooding in small streams running out of the San Gabriel Mountains, including those that burned during the Station Fire of 2009. Rain falling at rates of up to a half inch per hour were predicted, strong enough to trigger minor mud and debris flows in the 251- square-mile area of burned mountains.

At CHP headquarters, Jacobs said he noticed a surge in traffic crashes about 10 a.m., about the same time when the rain began to fall.

In San Pedro, geologists were watching how the rain would affect a large landslide along Paseo del Mar, where a roughly 900-foot-long section of the coastal bluff is threatening to slide into the ocean near the White Point Nature Preserve.

With nearly 2 inches of rain since July 1, Los Angeles is slightly ahead of the norm for this time of year -- about 1.4 inches. The annual norm for downtown Los Angeles is about 15 inches.

-- City News Service