Snow up high, flooding down below in Los Angeles amid winter storm in US

As rare blizzard conditions continued to present hazards in the mountains of Southern California on Saturday, residents at lower elevations dealt with the fallout from a more familiar threat: flooding.

Intense rains and powerful winds that pounded Los Angeles and surrounding counties on Friday night and early Saturday produced significant flooding in urban areas, downed trees and threatened to cause debris flow and mudslides.

Multiple water rescues have been conducted across counties because of rising waters, said Ariel Cohen, a meteorologist for the National Weather Service in Los Angeles. One person in Santa Barbara County, which also experienced some flooding, was injured after strong winds caused a tree to fall into a home, and in Inglewood, falling trees crushed a line of cars, taking out power lines, he said.

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One person died after a vehicle drove off the road and into a flood control area, though it was not immediately clear whether the death was related to the storm, said Kerjon Lee of Los Angeles County Public Works.

Meteorologists said that the most severe effects of the storm at lower elevations could be over, though flood watches remained in effect in parts of Los Angeles and Ventura County, according to the weather service.

A flood warning was also in place for the Santa Ynez River in Santa Barbara County until Saturday evening, threatening nearby farmland and the city of Lompoc.

Portions of Interstate 5 winding through Los Angeles County — including the Grapevine, a 40-mile stretch that goes up to Kern County — were closed on Saturday morning because of flooding, snow and mudslides.

“We’re having a lot of flooding,” said Eric Menjivar, a spokesman for Caltrans, California’s Department of Transportation. “It’s a slow-moving storm and the rain has been really consistent.”

More than 17,000 electricity customers in the Los Angeles region were also without power Saturday, according to Southern California Edison. Statewide, more than 117,000 customers were without power, according to the tracker poweroutage.us.

On Friday, Los Angeles International Airport received a record 2.04 inches of rain. Almost 15 inches of rain have fallen in parts of Los Angeles County over the past four days, the weather service estimated.

In the mountains around Los Angeles, blizzard warnings remained in effect. More than 4 feet of snow has already accumulated, and the total could double.