As storm clouds moved onshore Saturday morning, pea-sized hail fell in Altadena, Pasadena and Mt. Washington, and funnel clouds were spotted off Newport Harbor in Orange County.
But rainfall was light. Less than half an inch of rain is expected to fall before scattered showers and isolated thunderstorms clear out of the area Sunday morning, before the Academy Awards, according to Bonnie Bartling, a weather specialist with the National Weather Service office in Oxnard.
"There’s not a lot of moisture in it," Bartling said of the storm system. However, the weather service warned that showers may cause dangerous lightning strikes on the ground. Snow levels are expected to drop from an elevation of 5,300 feet to 4,500 feet by Saturday evening.
Four funnel clouds – clouds that look like tornadoes but do not touch down on the ocean surface or land – were spotted off Newport Harbor in Orange County on Saturday morning.
Because the storm system is coming from Alaska, temperatures will remain below normal for this time of year. The lows Saturday morning in the Los Angeles Basin were in the 50s, and dipped into the 40s in the San Fernando and San Gabriel valleys. Saturday’s highs are expected to be in the low 60s.
No evacuations have been ordered in suburban communities affected by the Station fire.
—Rong-Gong Lin II
Top photo: Families gather under cloudy skies for a Little League game at Malibu Bluff Park.
Credit: Irfan Khan / Los Angeles Times
Bottom photo: Oscar statues covered in plastic as rain falls in Hollywood on Saturday as preparations continue for Sunday’s Academy Awards in Hollywood. Credit: Al Seib / Los Angeles Times
A new Times database puts readers on the sidewalks of Hollywood, using more than a century of archives to track the lives of the stars, including current Oscar nominees Jeff Bridges, James Cameron, Matt Damon, Morgan Freeman, Sandra Bullock and Meryl Streep.