California storm shifts focus to wind, snow
A powerful winter storm that lashed California with heavy rain and frigid temperatures shifted its focus Saturday to wind and heavy snow, although forecasters said the risk of life-threatening flash floods in the Los Angeles area has passed.
The National Weather Service said blizzard conditions were expected at higher elevations, with wind gusts of up to 100 mph and several feet of snow in isolated areas.
“There’s already been reports of 2 to 3 feet across some of the higher peaks, and we’re looking at an additional foot, maybe two, of additional snowfall through the rest of the day,” said meteorologist Zach Taylor.
Overnight lows fell below freezing in some areas while downtown San Francisco approached record cold temperatures. A drop to 38 degrees would have been the coldest since 2009, but it didn’t get colder than 41, according to the National Weather Service.
The weather service had warned Friday of possible overnight flash floods, landslides and mudslides in Los Angeles County near creeks, streams, urban areas, highways and areas that were burned by wildfires. The threat zone included downtown L.A., Hollywood, Beverly Hills and many suburbs.
Flash flooding did hit nearby Ventura County early Saturday, where up to 7 inches of rain fell, but by 6 a.m. Saturday, the weather service said the heavy rain in both counties had ended and that flooding was no longer expected to pose a threat.
Meanwhile, people farther east were struggling to deal with the fallout from storms earlier this week.
More than 418,000 homes and businesses in Michigan were still without power Saturday morning, two days after one of the worst ice storms in decades caused widespread power outages by knocking down some 3,000 ice-coated power lines.
Promises of power restoration by today, when low temperatures were expected to climb back above zero, were little consolation.
“That’s four days without power in such weather,” said Apurva Gokhale, of Walled Lake, Michigan. “It’s unthinkable.”
Back in California, the Weather Prediction Center of the National Weather Service forecast heavy snow over the Cascade Mountains and the Sierra Nevada into the weekend.
California’s wine country wasn’t spared from the rare brew of wind and snow. Mark Neal told KPIX-TV that he woke up Friday morning to see a foot of snow — more than he had seen in more than 40 years — and dozens of his oak trees snapped in half.
“It’s pretty much a battleground if you look at it. Some of them are over 200 years old,” he said. Luckily, the vines were safely dormant.
The low-pressure system was expected to bring widespread rain and snow in southern Nevada by Saturday afternoon and across northwest Arizona Saturday night and this morning, the National Weather Service office in Las Vegas said.
An avalanche warning was issued for the Sierra Nevada backcountry around Lake Tahoe, which straddles the California-Nevada border. Nearly 2 feet of new snow had fallen by Friday and up to another 5 feet was expected when another storm moves in with the potential for gale-force winds and high-intensity flurries today, the weather service said.