Thunderstorms cause outages

Brief monsoon-like downpours, lightning pummel parts of Southern California

A monsoon-like storm briefly dropped heavy rain, lightning and thunder onto parts of Southern California roughly at 11:59 p.m. Thursday, knocking out power for several hundred homes and businesses.

More than 1,000 Southern California Edison customers were without power because of lightning and other storm conditions in Orange, Los Angeles and San Bernardino counties.

The biggest pockets of people without power at one point were in Redlands (833 customers) and Orange (622).

“The most important thing … is for people (when) impacted to go to the outage maps and sign up for outage alerts,” said David Song, an SCE spokesman. “You’ll get a good sense of when power might be restored, which will help you plan for the day or evening.”

Most areas in Southern California saw about onetenth of an inch of rain over a short period of time, said meteorologists with the National Weather Service.

Foothill areas, such as above Monrovia and Arcadia toward the Bobcat fireburn scar, saw one-third of an inch.

Lightning put on a show in some areas, but it wasn’t always entertaining.

More than 30 callers to the city of Orange Fire Department reported four structure fires, five outdoor fires and downed power lines and transformer fires. No injuries were reported. Lightning also struck a house on Birchmont in Aliso Viejo and set it afire.

The monsoonal moisture is typical in Southern California this time of year, coming from Mexico and circling above Southern California in a high-pressure center and sometimes leading to thunderstorms mostly over the mountains and desert.

“But sometimes that can go over to the valleys and the coast,” said Adam Roser, a meteorologist. “It doesn’t occur very often, especially that far west, but we get some good rain out of that. (But) over the weekend into next week is looking very dry.”