Storms Bring Rain, Flooding, Power Outages To County

SAN DIEGO -- A group of thunderstorms dumped on northern San Diego County Sunday morning, with nearly two inches of rain falling in Escondido in one hour Saturday.

A harried dispatcher at the Escondido Police Department said a rash of traffic accidents and flooded cars has spread across the city. "Accidents are happening all over the place, cars are getting stuck in lakes ... in the streets,'' she said.

Although no injuries had been reported by 9 a.m., San Diego Gas and Electric reported that lightning strikes had blacked out at least 10,000 electric customers in the Escondido area.

The National Weather Service issued a second flash flood warning for San Diego County just before 9 a.m., and meteorologist Miguel Miller said the storms are not moving away from the area anytime soon.

The 9 a.m. radar report showed strong thunderstorms and heavy rainfall across the northern half of San Diego County, and in the Temecula and Rancho California area of Riverside County.

"Right now they are just sort of blobbing around, and we have a whole line of storms between Carlsbad and Cuyamaca, and reaching up to Palomar Mountain, that are morphing into each other," Miller said.

Two weather observers in Escondido measured 1.89 and 1.7 inches of rain in a one-hour span as the storms opened up after 6:45 a.m.

California Highway Patrol officers said there was heavy rain in Valley Center and Escondido. But few traffic accidents were reported, and no state highways were closed as of 8:15 a.m.

But Miller said he expected arroyos and canyons in North County to be filled.

"Pick your creek in the region and it's probably flowing right now," Miller said. "But this is not longstanding enough to create a river-flooding problem" in the San Luis Rey and San Dieguito rivers, which drain the area.

The storms are tropical moisture fed up from the tropics by the low pressure system once known as category 5 Hurricane Dean and the system still has a center, currently 120 miles west of downtown San Diego.

Several bands of thunderstorms are circling out of the low pressure system "like the arms of Andromeda," Miller said. One band of heavy rain is in the Pacific waters near Santa Catalina Island, moving towards Los Angeles and Orange county later Saturday, the forecaster said.

The center of the low pressure system is 140 miles southwest of Los Angeles and residents along the coast there may expect rain this afternoon.