Heavy wind and snow bring blizzard conditions to Southern California
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LOS ANGELES – A powerful winter storm lashed through Southern California on Friday, blasting the mountains around Los Angeles with high winds and heavy snow, drenching the coasts with heavy rain, shutting down major highways and even dusting the Hollywood Hills for the first time in decades.
In the higher elevations, forecasters said, the storm was a true blizzard, with warnings in place until late Saturday afternoon.
The storm on Thursday walloped Portland, Oregon, with snow and low temperatures that contributed to the death of a child after an ambulance was delayed in its response to a medical call because of ice on the roads, officials said.
In Southern California on Friday afternoon, the storm was raising concerns among meteorologists and officials as they assessed multiple threats that would last through the weekend: several metres of snow in the mountains where roads are heavily travelled; pounding rain in lower elevations that could flood roadways; and thunderstorms that could produce hail and tornadoes.
“It’s a rare storm considering how cold it is – and how wet it is,” said Mr Ryan Kittell, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Los Angeles, on Friday.
While the rarity of the snowstorm prompted some anticipation among Californians unaccustomed to a phrase like “blizzard conditions”, there was still an entire weekend of dangers to look out for, including blizzard warnings for the mountains of Los Angeles, Ventura, Santa Barbara and San Bernardino counties through Saturday afternoon.
Up to 38cm of rain was expected to fall along the coasts and valleys, and the heaviest snow, up to 2m, was forecast to accumulate in areas of high elevation.
Areas between 760m and 1,200m were expected to receive up to 30cm of snow, and wind gusts of 129kmh were expected.
A vehicle drives through a snow storm in the San Gabriel Mountains in Mount Baldy, California, on Feb 24, 2023.
PHOTO: AFP
By late Friday afternoon, fewer than 100,000 customers in California, mostly in the northern part of the state, were without power, according to PowerOutage.us.
Millions of people in the west, mainly in California and Nevada, were under winter weather alerts.
Officials in Ventura County issued evacuation warnings for some inland communities, including around Ojai, through Saturday morning because of “anticipated flooding and debris flows”. NYTIMES
