Deluge Forces Evacuations In S. California Storm Intensified By El Nino Alters ‘Toy Express,’ Rose Parade Float Testing, Religious Procession

The season’s first storm strengthened by El Nino soaked Southern California on Saturday, flooding people out of mobile home parks and blocking the Pacific Coast Highway.

Rain began falling Friday, but the tempest saved its strongest punch for later. While the Santa Barbara area had 9 inches of rain over 24 hours, the National Weather Service said Laguna Beach had 6.34 inches Saturday morning alone.

“We’ve had a tremendous amount of flooding activity,” said Capt. Scott Brown of the Orange County Fire Authority. “Most of our storm channels and drainage culverts are near crest.”

The Pacific Coast Highway was closed during the morning by flooding at Huntington Beach.

The storm also brought snow and ice to the mountains north and east of Los Angeles. Interstate 5 was closed for three hours north of the city because of slippery pavement in Tejon Pass, at an elevation of only 4,100 feet.

The Orange County Fire Authority had a backlog of street flooding reports.

Orange County firefighters had to use inflatable boats to evacuate elderly residents of two mobile home parks in Huntington Beach after water filled streets and rose up to doorways early Saturday.

No injuries were reported there or inland at Lake Forest, where several cars were swept into a storm channel, Brown said.

The weather service posted severe thunderstorm and flash flood warnings for parts of Los Angeles and Orange counties after radar detected strong wind, heavy rain and large hail.

In West Los Angeles, a lightning bolt hit a palm tree at 3:30 a.m. and shattered two dozen windows of an apartment building, residents said. No one was injured.

“I thought it was a bomb. We were very scared,” said Bobby Kohanbasher, 15.

Heavy winds and rain cut power in many areas. In Los Angeles, about 10,000 customers had outages lasting from minutes to hours, said Ed Freudenburg of the city Department of Water and Power. Elsewhere, about 1,000 Southern California Edison customers had interruptions.

In Riverside County, flooding damaged 18 homes, some heavily. Some residents had to go to a Red Cross shelter, said fire Capt. Pixie Evans.

More rain and mountain snowfall was expected late Saturday from a trailing band of the storm system which triggered afternoon gale warnings off northern Santa Barbara County.

Because of the storm, the Rose Parade float construction committee in Pasadena decided to move its usual outdoor testing of mechanical floats indoors on Saturday.

Metrolink postponed until Dec. 19 its “Holiday Toy Express,” a decorated train that was to have crossed Southern California collecting toys for needy tots.

The Los Angeles Roman Catholic Archdiocese canceled today’s 67th annual procession for Our Lady of Guadalupe and moved the Mass from a stadium into a church.

The storm also complicated the search for a hiker missing since Friday in northern Los Angeles County. The hiker, 40-year-old Karen Tellez, failed to return from a hike after she got separated from friends near Lake Hughes. About 50 searchers and three dogs searched for the woman as the storm dumped 6 feet of snow, said county sheriff’s Lt. Larry Gump.

The periodic El Nino weather pattern, though not the cause of the storm, helped intensify it, meteorologists said.