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Updates: Click here for Friday’s updated article about Southern California travel restrictions.
Interstate 5 over the Grapevine and Interstate 15 at Cajon Pass are closed because of heavy snow and stuck vehicles, the California Highway Patrol said Thursday.
The I-5 closure is a 40-mile stretch between Grapevine and Parker Road in Castaic. The I-15 closure is between Nealeys Corner (Sierra Avenue) and Hesperia.
The CHP had no estimate as to when the roads would reopen. The affected passes — Tejon and Cajon — are about 4,000 feet in elevation.
A truck driver was found dead Thursday morning in a big rig stranded on the snowbound section of I-5. The body was discovered at 8:25 a.m. in the truck on the shoulder of the southbound lanes near Frazier Mountain Park Road, the CHP said. It is not yet known if the death is weather-related; the CHP said the man had an unspecified medical condition.
The CHP and Caltrans also reported closures and restrictions on smaller mountain and high desert highways in Southern California:
- Highway 58 (the Barstow-Bakersfield Highway) was closed over Tehachapi Pass. That closure is between Towerline Road, near Edison, and Mojave.
- Highway 33 was closed through Los Padres National Forest, from 6 miles north of Ojai to the Santa Barbara County line, near Ventucopa.
- Highway 2 was closed through the San Gabriel Mountains, between La Cañada Flintridge and 5 miles west of Big Pines.
- Highway 138 was closed between Highway 2 and I-15.
- Highway 18 through the San Bernardino Mountains remained open, but chains were required on all vehicles, even four-wheel-drive, between Running Springs and Rimforest.
- Chain controls for all vehicles except four-wheel-drive with snow tires were imposed on stretches of Highway 38 and Highway 330 (City Creek Road) in the San Bernardino Mountains.
Highway 14, between Palmdale and Santa Clarita, remained open.
The Los Angeles and Santa Barbara areas are expecting 2 to 3 inches of rain through Friday, and up to 3 feet of snow could fall in the higher elevations of Southern California, CNN meteorologist Michael Guy said.
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