http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-cold18jan18,0,1404930.story?
I think kanan road where the tunnel is in the picture is at ~2k ft elevation. TV news interviewed a guy who said he'd lived in Colorado for 20yrs, and he tried to drive Kanan Rd over into the SFValley, but had to turn around as the roads were impassable, covered with black ice. What I could see from the TV news footage of the snow in the Kanan tunnel area was that it was a very wet snow.
What fell in W. LA is up to question as no one used a cell phone to video record any falling snowflakes.
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heavy accumulation of irregularly shaped hailstones called graupel that can be confused with snowflakes."
I don't know if you call it sleet, or just wet soft clear melting slushy snow falling, but I've been hit with that kind of precipitation on the ski lifts at Mammoth in late spring.
http://knbc.nbcweatherplus.com/weat...49/detail.html?qs=;s=30;p=weather;dm=ss;w=400
This other photo shows there was plenty of rain falling and pooling in the streets while the white stuff came down. I was in the area, just 1 mile south at the time and there was a period of about 15minutes where there where lots of thunder boomers, outside you could see the clouds where close to the ground. But plenty of clear sky just beyond these dark clouds. So there where a small cell of thunder clouds. Snow could have been possible, as could hail be falling at the same time (neither in my area, just some heavy rain drops).
IIRC, 2002? or there abouts, same type of jet stream pattern resulted in artic cold storm and snow flurries (shown on TV) falling at beach level just north of Malibu on the PCH, but it was so quick the snow just melted when it hit the ground.
1982? Santa Monica hills got ~6in of snow that stayed for hours
http://www.myforecast.com/bin/weatherfacts.m?city=11920&metric=false
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JANUARY 15TH, 1932-Up to two inches of snow whitened the Los Angeles basin of California. The Los Angeles Civic Center reported an inch of snow, and even the beaches of Santa Monica were whitened with snow, in what proved to be a record snowstorm for Los Angeles.
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More pix of WLA/Weswood hail/slush/snow?:
http://blogging.la/archives/2007/01/its_snowing_in_westwood.phtml
