The Pacific Weather Was Foul

Rain, floods, high seas and a tornado

For Queen Elizabeth, the California weather was a surprise. For residents, it was a grim and ugly rerun of the storms that had lashed the state in late January. Only this time it was worse. Last week's floods, high waves and winds left at least 16 dead, caused more than $160 million in damage, and forced 10,000 residents to flee their threatened or damaged homes. "I'm getting tired of this," said San Francisco Meteorologist Chuck Terrell.

The rains came--and came and came--in record torrents. The Mount Wilson Observatory, just east of Los Angeles, recorded six inches in twelve hours; in parts of Orange County to the south, one-half inch fell in only eight minutes. The downpours weakened dams, washed out roads, and unleashed murderous mud slides. Three-year-old John Price was crushed to death in his bedroom when a 300-ft.-wide wall of mud swept down a hillside and crashed into his parents' Clear Lake home. Alviso, a low-lying San Jose neighborhood, was suddenly transformed into a 6-ft.-deep lake when floodwaters overflowed the banks of a nearby creek. Said San Jose Fire Department Captain Jerry Hubbard: "The rain filled Alviso like a bathtub."

Bunyanesque waves as high as 16 ft. crunched homes and municipal piers into little more than kindling wood. The raging surf destroyed Esther, the man-made oil-well island off the coast of Huntington Beach. The heavy seas bit off a 400-ft. section of the historic Santa Monica pier. Along the ravaged coast, more than 1,600 homes were damaged, including dozens in expensive enclaves of Santa Barbara and Stinson Beach. Tennis Star Billie Jean King's exclusive Malibu home, the subject of a celebrated "palimony" suit by her former lover Marilyn Barnett, was pounded off its foundation and had to be destroyed by officials for safety reasons. A tornado, rare for California, ripped through a section of Los Angeles.

President Reagan flew low over the storm-battered coast north of Los Angeles, not far from his ranch in Santa Barbara, and seemed likely to declare seven counties disaster areas, adding them to the 24 so designated in the wake of the weather's previous rampage.

More storms may be on the way, moving toward the state from out over the Pacific. "By coming straight across the ocean," explains Arthur Lezzard, chief meteorologist for the National Weather Service in Los Angeles, "the storms are picking up a lot of moisture, and they are hitting California broadside. The pattern should continue for another month or so." This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so viewer discretion is required.