Rain Slows Morning Commute, Floods Roadways

The tail end of this year's first fall storm wreaked havoc on the morning commute throughout San Diego County early today, flooding roadways and causing dozens of accidents.   

Flooded roadways included a transition ramp from northbound Interstate 5 to state Route 52 in the La Jolla area, where at least two vehicles became stranded in standing water, according to the California Highway Patrol.   

The agency's website indicated it was working on more than two dozen traffic accidents around the county this morning, most involving no injuries.   

One of the more serious crashes attributed to the rain occurred around 2 a.m., when a tractor-trailer tanker jack-knifed on the westbound state Route 52 ramp from southbound state Route 163.   

The CHP closed the ramp until just before 7 a.m. while crews cleaned up fuel and removed the vehicle, which had settled with the front half of its cab hanging several yards in the air off the ramp.   

Medics took the driver of the tanker to Sharp Hospital, a San Diego fire-rescue dispatcher said, calling the injuries "mild."  

 The unsettled weather made landfall late Wednesday into early Thursday, dropping temperatures 5 to 10 degrees below normal along the coast and 10 to 20 degrees below normal inland.   

The National Weather Service reported a new record temperature was set on Palomar Mountain Thursday. The daytime high was the coldest it's ever been at 50 degrees – two degrees cooler than the previous record low high for an October 11, which was set in 2000.   

The storm also dropped a record .44 inches of rain in Oceanside, breaking the previous rainfall high of .35 inches for the same date in 1987.    

The weekend is expected to bring a gradual warming trend along with fair weather, NWS meteorologist Tina Stall said.

–City News Service