Rare thunderstorm sends Del Mar horsemen ducking for cover

DEL MAR, Calif. – Kristin Mulhall was standing in the breezeway of her stable at about 6:30 a.m. on Saturday when a bolt of lightning from a brief storm struck a palm tree about 50 yards from her barn.

“It scared the crap out of me,” she said. “At first, I thought it was a power line.”

Mulhall knew the lightning had struck the palm tree when the top of the tree caught fire. “I called the fire department,” she said.

When another crack of lightning lit the sky, Mulhall was on the move. “I jumped in here,” she said, motioning toward her stable office.

Welcome to opening weekend at Del Mar 2016. The remnants of Tropical Storm Dolores from Baja California reached San Diego County early Saturday morning, leading to an early-morning rainstorm. The storm subsided quickly, allowing for the resumption of training, but rain resumed by lunchtime.

Occasional rain was expected through midday Monday.

While thunderstorms are common in other parts of the country, they are rare in Southern California, especially in recent years with the region stuck in a severe drought. This weekend’s rainstorm won’t reverse that – the region needs approximately 100 inches of rain to recover, meteorologists said last winter – but it will not hurt, unless you are a palm tree.

Quickly, the local fire department did arrive to extinguish the palm-tree fire, briefly blocking traffic on Jimmy Durante Boulevard, adjacent to the racetrack.

The brief storm occurred during a break in training. At the time, jockeys’ agent Tommy Ball was in the track kitchen, not far from the famous jockey Victor Espinoza, the regular rider of American Pharoah. When the lightning storm arrived, Ball had friendly advice for Espinoza.

“You better stay in there,” Ball told Espinoza. “The chances of getting hit by lightning and winning the Triple Crown in the same year are pretty close.”