LOS ANGELES: A major Pacific storm that broke records across Southern California and delivered a small measure of relief to the drought-stricken state brought more rain on Wednesday but the danger of major mudslides in wildfire-scarred areas appeared to have passed, officials said.
The sub-tropical storm, which originated in the Pacific Ocean south of Hawaii, was the strongest to hit Southern California since at least February and poured at least an inch (2.5 cm) of rain across a wide swath of the region, and up to four inches (10 cm) in some mountain and foothill areas.
Rain also battered the northern part of the state, where three sinkholes opened up in San Francisco, one of them 20 feet (6 meters) long, 20 feet wide and 9 feet (2.74 meters) deep, said Tyrone Jue, a spokesman for the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission.
Rainfall records for Dec. 2 dating to the 1960s were broken in downtown Los Angeles, Los Angeles International Airport, Long Beach Airport and communities such as Antelope Valley, Palmdale and Camarillo, National Weather Service meteorologist Eric Boldt said.
The storm also brought much-needed snow to area mountains.
Boldt said mudslides and flash floods that officials feared in areas where wildfires had left hillsides nearly barren did not materialize because rainfall rates generally remained below the half-inch-per-hour (1.27-cm-per-hour) threshold that usually triggers them.
Evacuation orders that were issued for the wildfire areas were largely lifted by early on Wednesday.
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