LOS ANGELES — Heavy rain from a winter storm system hit Southern California late Thursday evening, triggering car accidents, road closures and mudslides.
There was moderate mud and debris flow near the area burned last year by the Bond fire, which scorched over 6,000 acres in Orange County, destroying vegetation and causing the soil to weaken.
As of Friday morning, there were no reports of damage to homes or any related injuries, said Carrie Braun, a spokeswoman for the Orange County Sheriff’s Department.
There were voluntary evacuation warnings issued for those living in Silverado, Williams and Modjeska canyons that will last until at least Friday early afternoon, according to the department. A flash flood watch is in effect in those areas through 4 p.m.
The rainfall last Sunday night caused mud to slide onto Ambrose Jimenez’s property in Silverado Canyon.
Jimenez, 63, didn’t realize what had happened until Monday morning when he tried opening his screen door only to find one foot of mud trapping it.
“I had no idea the mud was creeping in all night long,” he said. “Mud just came down toward our kitchen wall, around the house and on the sides.”
Between Monday and Thursday, Jimenez worked with a friend to clear his property. They used a wheelbarrow to move the mud and installed 35 bales of hay and 755 sandbags to create a barrier to guide the mud away from the house into an empty lot next door, he said.
“We angled the mud from the gully [near my house] to an empty lot next door with the hay bales and sand,” he said.
The work continued from Monday until Thursday at 5 p.m., just hours before the new storm arrived.
“We knew the storm was coming. We worked frantically trying to shore up the back hillside,” said Jimenez, a fraud investigator for Citibank.
About 9:20 p.m., Jimenez first heard the rainfall. By 1 a.m. Friday, the storm intensified.
“I heard rocks coming down and I thought to myself, oh no, we’re in trouble,” he said.
Jimenez saw 3 to 5 feet of mud accumulating within five minutes on the hill behind his house. Then, “instantly, it was like someone uncorked a champagne bottle,” he said.
The mud turned to water and flushed through his property.
“All we have to deal with was water,” he said. “We can deal with that. It’s the mud and the debris that’s a problem.”
“We are lucky,” Jimenez said. “We have neighbors who are not so lucky.”
Orange County received around an inch of rain, and up to 1.5 inches in the hills, between 10 p.m. Thursday and 1 a.m. Friday, according to Bruno Rodriguez, a meteorologist for the National Weather Service in San Diego.
The Inland Empire received between .75 and 1.25 inches of rain in urban areas. Nearby mountains got about a foot of snow around 4,000 feet, Rodriguez said. Most of the rain exited the area Friday morning, though small scattered thunderstorms could happen through Friday afternoon.
San Luis Obispo and Santa Barbara counties bore the brunt of the atmospheric river system, receiving between 6 and 12 inches of rain Wednesday and Thursday, according to Curt Kaplan, a meteorologist at the weather service office in Oxnard.
“Once the atmospheric river started moving south, it lost a little bit of its punch,” Kaplan said.
On Friday, between a quarter-inch and a half-inch of rain will fall on L.A. County. The mountains are expected to get 1 inch of rain. Hail was reported near Azusa along the 210 Freeway and near the Ranch 2 fire burn area, according to the weather service. The mountains in Los Angeles County are expected to get between 1 and 2 feet of snow above 6,000 feet Friday.
“We initially thought we would see 3 feet of snow but didn’t get as much rain in the mountains as we expected,” Kaplan said.
Scattered thunderstorms are possible until late Friday afternoon before the storm moves east, Kaplan said.
The rain also triggered mud and debris flows near the Bobcat burn scar in the Angeles National Forest, according to Kaplan. Much of that area was warned of possible evacuation Thursday by the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department.
Though the 5 Freeway through the Grapevine was open Thursday, snow flurries sticking to the roadway prompted California Highway Patrol to escort traffic Friday morning.
In Los Angeles, an overturned big rig and fire prompted the closure of three lanes of the eastbound 10 Freeway at Santa Fe Avenue to allow crews to repair the bridge railing. Two left lanes remained open. The ramp on Alameda to eastbound was closed Friday morning.
Route 39 at Old San Gabriel will be closed until noon because of mudslides nearby, authorities said.
