Los Angeles – Thunderstorms pounded Southern California with lightning-streaked downpours of rain and hail Monday, knocking out power to about 140,000 customers and snarling traffic as mudslides forced closure of the state’s main north-south interstate.
Interstate 5 was shut in both directions in the mountains about 65 miles north of Los Angeles because of the mud and up to 4 feet of standing water on parts of the road, said California Highway Patrol spokesman Johnny Fisher.
“We don’t know when it will be reopened or whether people were caught in the mudslides,” Fisher said.
In the Los Angeles area, mud and debris flowed off a burned mountainside in suburban Burbank, and hail nearly 1½ inches in diameter fell to the east in Arcadia.
Traffic accidents tied up freeways, including an apparently weather-related gasoline tanker crash and fire on I-5 that killed the driver shortly before 2 a.m.
Flash flooding was a concern in areas denuded by big wildfires earlier this fall.
“The sky just opened up,” Deputy Chief Larry Koch said in Burbank.
The National Weather Service issued a flash-flood warning for northern Los Angeles County and warned of possible overflow in streams and other bodies of water in San Bernardino and Riverside counties.
About 123,000 Southern California Edison customers had outages, mostly lasting from seconds to minutes, between late Sunday and Monday afternoon, when about 9,000 remained without electricity.
