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The iconic and typically bone-dry Los Angeles River is flowing freely after days of intense rainfall throughout southern California.
In the last few days the powerful winter storm that swept down the West Coast with flooding and frigid temperatures shifted its focus to southern California on Saturday, piling up snow and swelling rivers with runoff.
The Los Angeles Times referred to the concrete-lined river, which famously featured in movies such as Grease and Terminator 2, as ‘roaring to life’ during the stormy conditions.
It was photographed looking far more swollen than in any of its movie appearances, when cars were able to race down its concrete-lined banks with ease.
Meanwhile, extreme weather caused downed power lines in the Lynwood neighborhood, with at least one car consumed by flames as a result.
The river’s runoff has led to street flooding across the City of Angels, including at Hollywood Burbank Airport, Studio City and Laurel Canyon Boulevard. The flooding has also closed the 5 Freeway.
On Saturday afternoon, the National Weather Service was still warning that travel was nearly impossible through Los Angeles, Ventura and San Bernardino counties.
The notoriously bone-dry LA River ‘roared to life on Saturday afternoon after days of rainfall
In the last few days the powerful winter storm that swept down the West Coast with flooding and frigid temperatures shifted its focus to southern California on Saturday
The river famously featured in movies such as Grease and Terminator 2
After days of fierce winds, toppled trees and downed wires, more than 120,000 California utility customers remained without electricity, according to PowerOutage.us.
Multiday precipitation totals as of Saturday morning included a staggering 81 inches of snow at the Mountain High resort in the San Gabriel Mountains northeast of Los Angeles and up to 64 inches farther east at Snow Valley in the San Bernardino Mountains.
‘There’s already been reports of 2 to 3 feet (60 to 90 centimeters) 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 National Weather Service meteorologist Zach Taylor.
The Weather Prediction Center of the National Weather Service forecast heavy snow over the Cascade Mountains and the Sierra Nevada into the weekend.
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 Sunday 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 Sunday, the weather service said.
The LA River, shown here in 1978’s Grease, is usually bone dry
The river has featured in other movies such as Terminator 2 and Chinatown
On Friday, images of the famed Hollywood sign blocked out by clouds went viral. It also received a dusting of snow.
‘Shallow landslides and mudslides are expected,’ the weather service said. A blizzard warning was issued by the National Weather Service’s Los Angeles office, the first since 1989.
Earlier this week, San Diego’s National Weather Office issued its first ever blizzard warning for areas that included San Bernardino County.
On Thursday night, the adverse weather contributed to a 20 car pile up occurring on the 10 Freeway in the town of Yucaipa, around an hour and 45 minutes east of LA, reports KTLA. The crash sent eight people to local hospitals.
Rain falling at up to an inch an hour raised the fear of flooding or mudslides, across the state.
In Arizona, the heaviest snow was expected late Saturday through midday Sunday, with up to a foot of new snow possible in Flagstaff, forecasters said.
A car is towed from the snow on an onramp to the State Route 14 freeway which is shut down in both direction
On Saturday afternoon, the National Weather Service was still warning that travel was nearly impossible through Los Angeles, Ventura and San Bernardino counties
After days of fierce winds, toppled trees and downed wires, more than 120,000 California utility customers remained without electricity, according to PowerOutage.us
Multiday precipitation totals as of Saturday morning included a staggering 81 inches of snow at the Mountain High resort in the San Gabriel Mountains northeast of Los Angeles
Around 64 inches of snow was recorded at Snow Valley in the San Bernardino Mountains
Jaden Shabry, 15, of Boulder Creek, California, plays in the snow
A vineyard is covered in snow along Sierra Highway near Acton, California
This truck came off the road and ended up sunk in a drainage ditch in Acton, California, on Saturday
Weekend snow also was forecast for parts of the upper Midwest to the Northeast, with pockets of freezing rain over some areas of the central Appalachians. The storm was expected to reach the central high Plains by Sunday evening.
Meanwhile, people farther east were struggling to deal with the fallout from storms earlier this week.
More than a half-million people in Michigan were still without power late Friday night, 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 Sunday, when low temperatures were expected to climb back above zero, were of little consolation.
‘That’s four days without power in such weather,’ said Apurva Gokhale, of Walled Lake, Michigan. ‘It’s unthinkable.’
In Kalamazoo, Michigan, Allison Rinker was using a borrowed generator to keep her 150-year-old house warm Saturday after two nights in the cold and dark.
‘We were all surviving, but spirits were low on the second day,’ she said. ‘As soon as the heat came back and we were able to have one or two lights running, it was like a complete flip in attitude.’
A person helps push out a vehicle that became stuck in the snow on a roadway in the San Gabriel Mountains in the Angeles National Forest
Gael Guzman, eight, is pictured making a snowball with his family including 11-year-old brother Atziel
One resident of Santa Cruz said that they had never seen so much snow in all of years living there
At Burbank International Airport, a video first posted by ABC7’s Josh Haskell showed a Southwest Airlines flight coming in for landing over a flooded parking lot showing almost completely submerged cars
After driving to a relative’s home to store food, Rinker, 27, compared the destruction of trees to tornado damage.
‘The ice that was falling off the trees as it was melting was hitting our windshield so hard, I was afraid it was going to crack,’ she said. ‘There’s just tree limbs everywhere, half of the trees just falling down. The destruction is insane.’
Weekend snow also was forecast for parts of the upper Midwest to the Northeast, with pockets of freezing rain over some areas of the central Appalachians. The storm was expected to reach the central high Plains by Sunday evening.
Yet the cold weather blasting the North and West has avoided the southern states, leading to wild temperatures differences. The high temperature for the U.S. on Friday was 93 degrees Fahrenheit Falcon Lake, Texas, while the low was minus-35 degrees Fahrenheit near Huntley, Montana.
Further north, in the Canadian capital of Ottawa, it was announced Friday that the Rideau Canal Skateway, the world’s largest natural ice skating rink, will not open this season for the first time due to a lack of ice, its operator said on Friday, blaming the closure on climate change.
In Ottawa the mean temperature in January was 21.4 Fahrenheit, well above the -10.3C average.
At least three people have died in the coast-to-coast storms. A Michigan firefighter died Wednesday after coming in contact with a downed power line, while in Rochester, Minnesota, a pedestrian died after being hit by a city-operated snowplow. Authorities in Portland, Oregon, said a person died of hyperthermia.
Much of Portland was shut down with icy roads not expected to thaw until Saturday after the city’s second-heaviest snowfall on record this week: nearly 11 inches.
Tim Varner sat huddled with blankets in a Portland storefront doorway shielding him from some of the wind, ice and snow.
Local officials opened six overnight shelters but the 57-year-old, who has been homeless for two decades, said it was too hard to push a shopping cart containing his belongings to reach one.
‘It’s impossible,’ he said. ‘The snow gets built up on the wheels of your cart and then you find slippery spots and can’t get no traction. So you’re stuck.’
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