Storm gives California much-needed soaking
LOS ANGELES — Californians got a lot of what they wanted and not too much of what they didn’t from a major storm that finally blew out of the state Friday.
After drenching Northern California the previous day, the storm dumped up to 5 inches of desperately needed rain in Southern California. A landslide left 10 homes uninhabitable and fire officials executed a dramatic rescue of two people from the Los Angeles River.
The storm also touched off a small tornado in Los Angeles and a water spout off the coast of Newport Beach. It caused flooded streets, rock slides and traffic tie-ups in some areas
The tornado, with wind speeds of 65 to 85 mph, struck a south Los Angeles intersection shortly before 9:30 a.m., ripping tiles off roofs, damaging trees and mangling a billboard.
“It got a lot of people excited, but thank goodness nobody was hurt,” said Stuart Seto of the National Weather Service.
At the storm’s height, about 50,000 customers lost power, though most had it back quickly.
Still, with few exceptions, damage across the region was minor and the soaking was welcome in a state withered by three years of drought. No serious injuries were reported as the storm existed east toward the desert.
As the storm crept down the coast overnight, its powerful winds caused power outages around Santa Barbara, where the National Weather Service said up to 5 inches of rain fell in coastal mountains. Amtrak suspended service between Los Angeles and the Central Coast city of San Luis Obispo.
In Camarillo, a Ventura County city about 50 miles northwest of Los Angeles, rain was falling at about an inch an hour over hillsides ravaged by a 2013 wildfire. With few roots to hold the soil in place, and a waxy subsurface layer caused by heat from the flames, the deluge caused part of a hillside to give way.
Earthen avalanches also blocked part of the Pacific Coast Highway in Ventura County, north of Malibu.
