Freak storms pummel Southern California
By Carol J. Williams
June 4, 2009

Thunder rumbled through the Southland and freak storms pelted the region with hail, lightning and unseasonable rain, killing two women in San Bernardino County, bedeviling aviation and touching off more than a dozen brush fires on the parched mountain slopes ringing Los Angeles County.

The first of the fatalities occurred when lightning snapped off a tree limb that crashed onto a vehicle traveling through a residential neighborhood near Big Bear Lake, crushing driver Elena Martinez, 31, to death about 11 a.m.

Two hours later, a 35-year-old woman was killed by lightning that struck near a tree in the frontyard of her Fontana home.

The Fontana victim was not immediately identified.

In Cabazon, a woman shopping at the outlet mall just off Interstate 10 suffered moderate injuries from a near-miss lightning strike as she walked across the parking lot just after noon, said Riverside County Fire Department spokeswoman Jody Hagemann. The woman was taken by ambulance to a nearby hospital.

A Southwest Airlines plane bound for Burbank was struck by lightning more than half an hour into its flight, forcing the pilot to return to Oakland with the 53 passengers on board. There were no injuries or damage to the aircraft, and travelers were put on later flights. The plane returned to service after a safety inspection.

Lightning was blamed for more than a dozen brush fires in the Cleveland, Angeles and San Bernardino national forests. In the largest, called the McKinley fire, 150 acres burned before firefighters could extinguish it, said U.S. Forest Service spokeswoman Norma Bailey.

The electrical storms that swept inland areas also were suspected as the cause of a small blaze above the San Dimas Canyon Golf Course in eastern Los Angeles County.

Temperatures were about 10 degrees below normal in the area, with downtown Los Angeles registering 67 degrees at 2 p.m. Rain is so rare at this time of year that records were broken in Palmdale, Sandberg and Camarillo, where there had been zero precipitation on any June 3 in the years that the National Weather Service has been keeping records, the Oxnard office reported.

Small hailstones drummed at least four beachfront communities in San Diego County, as well as Murrieta in Riverside County, another oddity in late spring, according to the weather service.

Thunderstorms and light rain are forecast to continue through Friday or Saturday as a low-pressure system slowly makes its way inland from the coast, the weather service said.

Witnesses said after Simmons was hit by the lightning he walked all the way around the corner and back to his house where paramedics were called.

ABC23 spoke with the boy's older brother who said he is doing OK.

“They say he is doing good. All they have to do is check the blood. There’s no brain damage, lung damage or anything like that,” said Stephen Corcoran.

According to the National Weather Service the odds of being struck by lightning are 1 in 700,000.

Storms Bring Hail,
Lightning to Area
Updated: Thursday, 04 Jun 2009, 12:50 AM EDT
Published : Wednesday, 03 Jun 2009, 9:40 PM EDT
By MYFOXDC STAFF/myfoxdc

WASHINGTON, D.C. - Strong storms moved through much of the D.C. area on Wednesday evening, producing heavy rains, hail and even possible funnel clouds.

FOX 5 received reports of hail, some of it being golf ball-sized, in areas including Fredericksburg, Virginia, where some of the strongest weather was felt.

Heavy lightning was reported in D.C., Maryland and Virginia, and two 12-year-old boys were hit by lightning at a baseball field in Fredericksburg. One of those boys died of his injuries.

At Baltimore-Washington International Thurgood Marshall Airport, officials say a female security guard was also struck by lightning. It happened at Gate A. Airport spokesman Jonathan Dean was taken to the hospital with non-life threatening injuries.

In the District, a number of trees were down due to the weather, leaving some streets blocked to traffic. Trees were reported down at 15th Street NE and Independence Avenue NE, as well as along Massachusetts Avenue NE near Stanton Square.

Lightning jolts six people near fence in San Bernardino

By Andrew Edwards
Posted: 06/03/2009 07:58:16 PM PDT

Six people received a jolt after lightning struck a metal fence they were leaning against in a north San Bernardino neighborhood.

Emergency personnel responded to the call about 6 p.m. today near Electric Avenue and 40th Street.

Witness Aaron Sallis said he and the others were hanging out when the lightning bolt hit.

Sallis said all six young men seemed to have experienced electrical burns, but were conscious.

Firefighters treated four people at a nearby convenience store, and Sallis said the other two left the area.

Additional details from the San Bernardino City Fire Department were not immediately available.

A Lightning Strike Sparks Conway Fireposted 06/04/09 8:52 am

Conway - A Conway Day Spa was seriously damaged Wednesday afternoon in a fire that Conway Fire Department investigators and employees believe was started by lightning.

Gathering Day Spa Employee Alicia Mauldin said she was standing by a window when the lightning strike "shook the building" and knocked her down. Mauldin said she thought she may have been electrocuted by the bolt, but didn¹t think she had been seriously hurt.

Storms bring lightning strikes across county
By Debbi Baker, Union-Tribune Staff Writer, Jose Luis Jiménez, Union-Tribune Staff Writer
Originally published 9:56 a.m. June 3, 2009, updated 11:34 a.m., June 3, 2009

Nearly 100 lightning strikes were reported Wednesday morning in North County as a band of showers and thunderstorms moved across the county, officials with the National Weather Service said.

The late-season Pacific storm also brought pea-sized hail to Mission Beach, Pacific Beach and Ocean Beach about 9 a.m., said forecaster Stan Wasowski. The hail fell for about 3 minutes, he said.

The storm, fueled by an upper-level low-pressure mass several hundred miles off the coast, moved into the county near the Orange County border about 1:30 a.m., Wasowski said.

The storm is hovering over the area and slowly moving to the north, but the unstable air is producing isolated pockets of thunder and lightning in some other parts of San Diego, Wasowski said.

Firefighters quickly extinguished a small brush fire near the intersection of Highland Valley Road and Archie Moore Road near Ramona, according to a Cal Fire spokeswoman. The cause of that fire is under investigation.