Weather sounds off with wake-up calls

Marisa O’Neil

Some residents got a rude, unexpected awakening early Tuesday

morning.

The rare sound of thunderclaps erupted in the dark skies at about

2 a.m. Tuesday, startling some in the area. In fact, that weather

phenomenon is so infrequent here, some people didn’t know what to

think when the roar of thunder awoke them.

“I went over and opened the window,” Newport Beach visitor Sheila

Klein said. “I thought maybe it was an explosion, to tell you the

truth.”

Klein is visiting for the season from Scottsdale, Ariz., and was

surprised by the sudden thunderstorm. In the past four summers she’s

visited, Klein hasn’t seen a thunderstorm here yet.

The thunder and lightning caught another set of Arizona visitors

off-guard. Bob and Maggie Greenwood awoke to the sounds they’re used

to hearing in their native Prescott, Ariz.

But Bob Greenwood, who grew up in Costa Mesa, knows rainstorms

here are few and far between. It was even more surprising because the

family retired for the night beneath clear skies, Maggie Greenwood

said.

“We went to bed at about 9 p.m., and there were stars out,” she

said.

The weather didn’t seem likely to put a damper on anyone’s

vacations. By midday Tuesday, Newport-Mesa’s typical sunny skies and

warm temperatures had returned.

And wet roads did not cause a significant number of traffic

mishaps, California Highway Patrol Officer Katie Lundgren said.

The early-morning thunderstorm dropped a negligible amount of rain

in Newport Beach and Costa Mesa, said Robert Balfour, a meteorologist

for the National Weather Service in San Diego. But the storm was

indeed a rare occurrence in the area, he said.

A low-pressure system blew in from the northeast, bringing with it

cold air, Balfour said. When it met the warm air over Orange County,

the mass became unstable, resulting in the storm, he said.

“When it got over the water, which doesn’t cool as fast, it was

like someone turned the burner on,” he said.

Usually, systems come in from the northwest rather than the

northeast at this time of year. This system picked up steam from

Nevada, the Mojave Desert and the Santa Ana Mountains before dumping

its rain along the coast, Balfour said.

It could be a sign of things to come this winter. Forecasters at

the National Weather Service are predicting an El Nino pattern with a

53% chance of above-normal rainfall, he said.

El Nino patterns happen when water temperatures, especially off

the coast of Peru, are warmer than normal, Balfour said.

“It causes weather systems to energize, and that gets more

moisture over us,” he said.

This year’s possible El Nino is not expected to be as severe as

the one in 1997 and 1998, which dumped significant amounts of rain

over the area, Balfour said.

No more rain is expected the rest of the week, according to the

National Weather Service. Low temperatures are expected to be in the

mid-50s with highs in the upper 70s and low 80s for the rest of the

week.