Stormy Monday

By Teresa Rochester

April showers went to the extreme Monday, when a fierce storm rolled into town bringing with it wind, thunder, lightening, hail and a blackout at City Hall.

The blustery storm from the Gulf of Alaska dumped heavy rain on the city and left hundreds of Southern California Edison customers, including City Hall and police headquarters, without power in the early afternoon.

"We all kept working with our little emergency lights," said city spokesperson Judy Rambeau. "When they came on we just kept working. It was just like camping. The very resourceful people downstairs pulled their chairs into the lobby and continued their meeting where there was more light."

Metal detectors at the courthouse went down during the outage and the police station had to use a backup system for power. One of the highly touted features of the new $53 million public safety building are three large back-up generators that will power the building for 72 hours.

While Monday's storm wrecked havoc on Southern California highways, resulting in hundreds of car accidents on the area's freeways, on Santa Monica streets it was business as usual, said Lt. Gary Galinot of the Santa Monica Police Department.

"I wouldn't say there was any increase over any other rainy period," said Galinot. "There were not a lot of traffic accidents. There wasn't an increase."

Walter Wariner, the city's community forester, said that, unlike last month's windstorm, which felled two mature trees, Monday's storm left all the trees standing.

"It was smooth sailing," Wariner said.

The sun began to poke through the dark clouds that were dispersing over the ocean around 5 p.m.

By sunset the sky was clear, but a bank of storm clouds was drifting in over the Santa Monica Mountains.

Determined to leave with a bang, the storm dumped bean-sized hail around 11:15 p.m., before heading east toward the Rocky Mountains.