North Half of State Hit Hard by Latest Storm

Southern California was hit with heavy rains Saturday night that flooded freeways and some homes, while a storm earlier in the day sent five houses in Northern California skidding down a soggy hillside near the Russian River and knocked out power to 87,000 in the Bay Area.

Southland roadways were a mess late Saturday, as motorists sloshed through pools on several freeways, including up to eight inches of standing water on portions of the Santa Monica Freeway. In Malibu, Malibu Canyon Road was closed after a car was hit by three bowling ball-sized boulders and mud oozed onto the roadway.

In Santa Barbara, officials closed roads because of water and mudslides and evacuated mobile home parks near Highway 101 because of flooding from a nearby creek, but the waters had subsided by late Saturday and people began returning to their homes, authorities said.

The National Weather Service predicted that up to three inches of rain would douse the Los Angeles Basin by this morning, with some hilly regions receiving nearly twice that amount.

But forecasters and emergency officials had some good news for the entire state: Dams and levees were in good shape and showers were expected to be relatively light today, fading into cloudy skies Monday.

“It looks like we’re going to have a needed 24- to 36-hour break,” said National Weather Service meteorologist Mike Smith.

Yet another storm was heading eastward in the Pacific and could arrive Tuesday or Wednesday. ‘We’re still on the storm track,” Smith said.

Saturday’s storm dropped about an inch of rain in some parts of Northern California. Nonetheless, the weather wreaked plenty of havoc in areas already saturated from the rain series that began early in the week, closing highways and shutting down part of the Bay Area’s commuter rail system.

Ski resort and highway crews in the Sierra stepped up avalanche control efforts as the storm dumped two more feet of snow in the Lake Tahoe area, capping what authorities said was the snowiest week of the season.

In Rio Nido, about five miles east of the Russian River in Sonoma County, five homes slid from hillsides early Saturday. No one was injured, but authorities evacuated residents of about 300 other homes as a precaution.

Meteorologists clocked wind gusts at up to 125 mph atop the East Bay Area’s Mt. Diablo. And flooding again closed major roadways, including U.S. 101 at the Marin-Sonoma County line.

But officials said Northern California’s major rivers were expected to stay within their banks over the next few days, and the respite from heavy rains was giving workers time to shore up levees.

In Camarillo in Ventura County, workers were cleaning and drying out City Hall, which suffered more than $1 million in flood damage. Nearby, county flood control workers were shoring up a channel in which a 150-foot wall had been undermined by Friday’s surging torrent. And in Thousand Oaks, crews were patching a 28-foot-deep sinkhole that blocked off Moorpark Road near Thousand Oaks High School.

At a Red Cross shelter in Port Hueneme, about 70 people sipped hot chocolate as volunteers made arrangements for those needing a place to stay.

In Los Angeles County, onlookers watched spectacular waves. The harbor patrol in Redondo Beach reported 15-foot swells crashing over the breakwater.

And at the Venice Pier, part of a several-mile stretch of beaches that had been closed because of storm-caused sewage spills, crowds gathered as huge waves barreled to shore.

In Los Angeles, the Red Cross opened a shelter for residents of a Rampart Boulevard apartment house that was flooded Friday. The shelter, at Virgil Middle School on Vermont Avenue, was the fourth the agency has opened in Southern California because of the storm. About 50 people were at the facility Saturday, officials said.

Police identified the body of a woman who plunged into the swollen Los Angeles River in Paramount on Friday in an apparent attempt to avoid arrest in a stolen car. Renee Cruz, 20, of Long Beach, along with her boyfriend, fled the vehicle they were riding in when stopped by authorities and jumped into the river.

Anthony McGonigle was able to get out of the river and was arrested. But Cruz was swept downstream; her body was discovered a few miles away. McGonigle, 33, also of Long Beach, was arrested on suspicion of auto theft and murder in connection with his companion’s death.

Cruz’s death was the fifth statewide this week in storm-related fatalities.

Times staff writer Patrick Kerkstra and correspondents Lisa Fernandez and Robert Gammon and Times wire services also contributed to this story.