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A cold front turbocharged by tropical precipitation brought rare snow and heavy rain to some urban Southern California rooftops over the weekend, with more in the forecast.
Late-winter extreme weather Sunday also impacted the Midwest and Plains states.
The leading edge of California’s weekend storm was headed east and wreaking havoc as it continued to draw warm energy and clash with cold air, federal forecasters said.
A squall line was marching through Oklahoma on Sunday, with multiple tornado and severe thunderstorm warnings in effect. The National Weather Service office in Norman, Oklahoma, called the front a “remarkable, perhaps historic storm system.”
Forecasters blamed a derecho, or line of sustained, high-power winds of up to 110 mph, which is above the threshold for hurricane-force.
The Texas Panhandle and southeastern Kansas were also subject to the extreme weather, federal forecasters said, where severe thunderstorm and high wind warnings were in effect.
Snow across much of the rest of the nation, including the Pacific Northwest, the Upper Midwest and the Northeast, would make travel difficult overnight, the weather service said.
In Michigan, the number of homes and businesses without power dropped to nearly 300,000 Sunday afternoon from nearly 800,000 Thursday, according to according to grid tracker PowerOutage.us.
In California, the mix of a relatively warm atmospheric river and cold air from the Gulf of Alaska meant that many residents of high desert communities and Southern California valleys, including Antelope Valley and the San Gabriel Valley, woke up to a fresh dusting of snow Saturday, according to the National Weather Service.
Video also appeared to show snow falling Saturday in Rancho Cucamonga and Fontana, in San Bernardino County.
Unheard-of amounts of snow were recorded in mountains from the Sierra Nevada to Southern California’s Peninsular Ranges that stretch into Mexico.
In the last four days, nearly 5 feet of snow was recorded at Donner Summit, the University of California, Berkeley’s Central Sierra Snow Lab tweeted. In that same period, Mount Baldy, near downtown L.A., measured more than 3 feet, and Mount Laguna in San Diego County recorded more than 2 feet, according to the National Weather Service.
At Mountain High Resort in Wrightwood, about 75 miles east of L.A., more than 6 feet of snow fell in less than a week — with 5 of those feet in a 24-hour period. So much snow fell that the resort said it closed Saturday to “use what available staff we have to dig out and clean up.”
The snow, rain and wind prompted road closures and flooding near rivers and washes throughout California as the storm moved south and east from Oregon overnight.
Heavy snow and ice were to blame for the closure of Interstate 5’s Grapevine, the main roadway to San Francisco. It reopened Sunday afternoon, according to the California Highway Patrol.
The city of Big Bear Lake warned Saturday that all roads to the community surrounded by the San Bernardino National Forest were closed due to snow, with no estimate available on when they might reopen. Yosemite National Park said it would be closed until Wednesday because of severe winter conditions.
More than 76,000 homes and businesses in California were without power Sunday afternoon, according PowerOutage.us.
Several inches of rain fell across Los Angeles County over a four-day period. Topanga Canyon near Malibu received 6.7 inches, Pasadena recorded 7.84 inches, and 4.3 inches fell in downtown L.A., according to the weather service.
Three RV trailers parked at the Valencia Travel Village RV Resort in Castaic, at the northern end of L.A. County, were swept into a storm-swollen Santa Clara River overnight, prompting a helicopter-search-and-rescue crew from the nearby Ventura County Fire Department to respond.
A trailer was found, according to the fire department, but no victims were located and no injuries were reported.
The heavy rain was especially perilous for those without shelter. In Los Angeles, a helicopter rescue crew hoisted two homeless men stranded on islands of dry ground in the Hanson Flood Control Basin to safety Saturday, the Los Angeles Fire Department said in a series of statements.
The men were uninjured and released at the scene, the department said.
Los Angeles County officials shut down 24 miles of beach from Nicholas Canyon in Malibu to White Point Beach in San Pedro for nearly two hours Saturday afternoon after lightning was observed on the shoreline, according to county lifeguards.
In Arizona, where winter storm warnings have also been issued in the north, there was a collision involving approximately 15 vehicles on Interstate-17. An unspecified number of people suffered non-life threatening injuries and are getting treatment.
In Michigan, which has been battered by an ice storm, about 311,000 utility customers were without power early Sunday, according to PowerOutage.us.
Trevor Lauer, president of DTE Energy, estimated power would be restored to 95% of the utility’s customers by Sunday, when warmer weather was forecast to settle in.
The utility said it had more than 4,000 workers tasked with restoring electricity and going door-to-door to check up on vulnerable residents.
The rain-producing front that pummeled California was expected to move east across the nation through the early part of the week, bringing rain to the desert southwest, moving into the Midwest and Great Lakes, and eventually affecting the East Coast with a fresh round of rain and possibly snow, federal forecasters said.
Additional storms from the Gulf of Alaska were forecast for California and the West, but it was unlikely any would mimic the strange brew of tropical precipitation and snow-worthy cold that struck the coast overnight, forecasters said.
“In the future, these can definitely happen,” said Adam Rosen, a National Weather Service meteorologist in San Diego. “But they don’t happen very often. This was an anomalous event here.”
