HUNTINGTON BEACH, Calif. — Southern California welcomed cooler temperatures and spotty rain Saturday as a tropical storm veered off the Pacific Coast and faded, helping put an end to a blistering heat wave that nearly overwhelmed the state's electrical grid.
Thunderstorms were forecast for the Los Angeles region Saturday that could linger in mountainous areas on Sunday. But after Hurricane Kay made landfall in Mexico this week it quickly was downgraded to a tropical storm and weakened further until it largely disappeared, said John Dumas, a meteorologist for the National Weather Service in Oxnard, adding the scattered rain falling in the region is leftover moisture from a has-been storm.
