Cold, windy weather and light rains blew through Santa Barbara County on Monday afternoon, and temperatures are likely to stay cooler for a few days, according to the National Weather Service.
Light showers hit downtown Santa Barbara, with the Santa Barbara County Administration Building recording about one-hundredth of an inch of rain.
Santa Maria’s County Building recorded about one-third of an inch, and areas near Lompoc recorded some of the largest numbers, with City Hall measuring almost a half-inch of rain according to county Public Works real-time rainfall data.
As of Monday afternoon, “it looks like the steadiest rain has moved through already,” said Scott Sukup, meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Oxnard.
There are still some showers that could continue throughout the night until Tuesday morning, and a wind advisory is in effect until 4 a.m. Tuesday.
Generally the rainfall on the South Coast has been around a tenth of an inch, with most falling farther north on the Central Coast, Sukup said.
“It’s going to be on the chillier side” through Wednesday, he said, with highs in the 70s, and warming up into the weekend.
Residents in downtown Santa Barbara experienced power flickering on and off on Tuesday afternoon, and several areas throughout the county experienced outages, including PG&E customers in the Santa Maria Valley.
Wet roads may have contributed to the rash of highway vehicle accidents Monday, which included a fatal rollover into a creek bed off of Highway 101 and a gravel truck overturning its load and blocking all but one lane of the highway for several hours.
A pickup truck later crashed on Highway 154, spilling a load of nails across the roadway and blocking traffic just as the evening commute was getting started.
A man was killed after a single vehicle rollover occurred near the Gaviota Tunnel Monday afternoon. The incident occurred just hours after the driver of a minivan was injured in the same area after another single-vehicle rollover.
Also included in the spate of accidents was a morning crash over the side of Highway 154 in which three people were injured and one patient had to be rescued out of the vehicle and up to the roadway using a Stokes basket and rope system.
— Noozhawk staff writer Lara Cooper can be reached at lcooper@noozhawk.com. Follow Noozhawk on Twitter: @noozhawk, @NoozhawkNews and @NoozhawkBiz. Connect with Noozhawk on Facebook.
