SOUTHLAND – (INT) – Lightning staged spectacular displays Wednesday as the first monsoon storms of the season marched through Southern California. But, there were deadly consequences.

In Pico Rivera, a woman walking her two dogs along a levee bordering the San Gabriel River was struck by lightning and killed. The lightning left pockmarks in an asphalt trail where the woman had been walking.

“There’s a one-in-a-million chance of something like this happening and it happened,” Sheriff’s Sgt. Patrick Morey told the Los Angeles Times.

The woman’s death was the nation’s first recorded lightning fatality this year, according to the National Lightning Safety Council.

The storm cells intensified and became more numerous as more lightning flashed across Southland skies and into the Inland Empire at nightfall.

Hundreds of cloud to ground lightning strikes were reported or observed Wednesday throughout the San Bernardino Valley, but rainfall was light.

Further inland, the National Weather Service reported heavy rain in the Anza-Borrego Desert.

Story Date: June 23, 2022