Here in Los Angeles, we just had a remarkable winter storm. The Southern California mountains had their second blizzard warning ever and the San Diego NWS forecast office issued its first blizzard warning ever. Here in West Los Angeles, from February 22nd through the 25th, we had 4.75 inches (12.1 cm) of rain, with 2.7 inches of that falling on Friday, February 24th.

Today, February 26th, dawned with partly cloudy skies after a chilly night. Looking out the back window, I could see some snow on the mountains. I knew I needed to get out and try to see what it looked like with snow levels down to around 1,500 ft (457 meters). Around noon I drove to the Baldwin Hills Scenic Overlook. This California State Parks run facility is a nice park with great views. There is also a long staircase up that is popular with those looking for a good cardiovascular workout.

I had never been up to the overlook in all the years I have lived in Los Angeles. I drove up, parked and started walking toward the overlook areas. I was immediately rewarded by a great view of downtown Los Angeles. While the tops of the mountains where shrouded in clouds, the snow was clearly visible. Click on any picture to get a full-sized view.

Here is a closer view of downtown with snow on the San Gabriel Mountains visible. These pictures are taken looking north.

I walked around to get a view toward the west and had quite a view. This is a very wide panorama, probably too wide to see everything clearly (click on the picture). You can see everything from Playa Vista on the left to Mid-Wilshire on the right.

The Hollywood Hills, with the Hollywood Sign and Griffith Observatory clearly visible, had an amazing backdrop of snowy mountainsides beneath the clouds.

My former workplace, Sony Pictures Studios, was clearly visible. If you look carefully, you can see the rainbow sculpture in front of the Thalberg Building on the right side of the photo. The iconic water tower is in the middle of the picture. The lot extends to the parking lots visible on the left.

The Culver Studios, newly rebuilt and occupied by Amazon Studios, was right below me.

From here, I took another picture looking northwest towards the Hollywood Sign. With this more tightly cropped image you can really see how low the snow levels were.

Before I left, I took one last look at downtown Los Angeles.

Since I am sharing post-storm pictures, I have a few more from January. When we were returning from Seattle in January, we came in just as a storm was leaving. Flying over Ventura, there was a beautiful view of the Santa Barbara Channel with Santa Cruz Island and Anacapa Islands on the far side. Lake Casitas was visible along with the Sun reflecting off of the Santa Clara River.

As we came in over Santa Monica Bay, it was clear that the storm was still working on blowing itself out. The waves were definitely pounding the beach.

After we turned back to the west to join the approach line into LAX, I had some great views of the city. You can see the city’s great sprawl. The structure moving up the right side of the picture starting from the lower right corner is the Alameda Corridor. Completed in 2002, this below-grade, two-track line connects Los Angeles and Long Beach harbors with the rail yards near downtown Los Angeles. This saves miles of travel and eliminated hundreds of street crossings by freight trains serving the top two ports in the United States and the ninth busiest ports in the world.

Finally, a nice close aerial view of downtown Los Angeles.