Wild Winter Weather Sees Record Lows for California
The iconic Hollywood sign could be dusted in snow for tomorrow night's Oscars.
Feb. 26, 2011— -- It could be a quick walk down the red carpet for Hollywood's hottest celebrities at tomorrow night's Academy Awards, as record low temperatures are expected for the weekend across California.
An arctic blast up and down the West Coast has seen the mercury plummet as low as 39 degrees in Los Angeles and snow fall for the first time in 35 years in the San Francisco area.
Though precipitation in the city has not been heavy enough to cause any accumulation in San Francisco, the snow still has area residents stocking up on supplies.
Sierra County, Calif., which lays inland of San Francisco on the Nevada border, was hit the hardest, with some having to cancel travel plans due to heavy snow.
"We had to turn around and come back," one Sierra resident told "Good Morning America." "We got some food -- that, we need to pack up on -- we got some batteries for out lanterns."
Meanwhile heavy rains in the Santa Cruz mountains have officials concerned about safety as well.
"This ground is really saturated with water and now we're into slides," one official told "GMA."
In Oakland, extremely high winds have tossed tree limbs around neighborhoods, with one crashing through the windows of a baby's bedroom. The child was not hurt.
"[it was like] a huge truck that hit a building -- I cannot describe it unless you hear it," the baby's father said.
About 350 miles south, the iconic sign that looms over Hollywood could be dusted in a light snow for tomorrow night's Academy Awards.
Producers of the hotly-anticipated Oscar ceremony have covered the Kodak Theatre's outdoor set decorations and iconic red carpet in tarp.
"It's a La Nina year, we've done fairly well," said Garth Kemp, meteorologist for KABC-TV in Los Angeles.
"But now we've seen this cold air from Canada that usually hits the upper Midwest, back east in NY and those areas slip down, right down the west coast and right over us, and that's just producing weather that we've never seen," Kemp added.
