Power Back for Most After Storm

Crews were kept busy Wednesday restoring power and clearing roads of trees and branches knocked down by high winds.

Southern California Edison had most outages handled by the end of the day. The only real problem spots remaining were in Gardena and Santa Ana, where each city had about 1,000 outages, said SCE's David Song.

Gusts topping 50 miles per hour across the area uprooted trees and downed power lines beginning Tuesday night, knocking out power to thousands of utility customers from Orange County to the Los Angeles-Ventura county line and beyond.

Edison reported that outages at the height of the windstorm affected more than 17,000 customers in its service area from Anaheim to the Los Angeles-Ventura county line—including several outages in Redondo Beach—as of about 6:30 p.m. Tuesday. The hardest-hit area was the San Gabriel Valley, particularly in San Gabriel, Sierra Madre, Arcadia and Monrovia, said Mashi Nyssen of SCE.

Also affected in the Greater Los Angeles area were parts of Inglewood and Huntington Beach, she said, adding that all the outages were wind-related.

By about 5:20 a.m. Wednesday, power had been restored to all but about 2,200 SCE customers, with many of the remaining affected customers in Redondo Beach, Long Beach and West Covina, Nyssen said.

The rain—as opposed to the wind—was a small part of the latest weather system to strike the Southland. Rainfall totals in the 24-hour period that ended at 4 p.m. Tuesday included 0.69 of an inch in Pasadena, .51 in downtown Los Angeles, .49 at Santa Monica Airport, .36 in Pomona, .31 in Northridge, .23 at Los Angeles International Airport, and .18 in Redondo Beach.

Wind gusts, meanwhile, reached 51 mph in Saugus, 49 mph in the Newhall Pass, 48 mph in the Malibu Hills, 45 mph in Beverly Hills and 40 mph in the South Bay.

A new storm, also from the Gulf of Alaska, is expected to hit by the weekend, with rain forecast for Sunday and showers for Monday, according to the NWS.