DOWNPOUR CREATES MESS ON AREA ROADS RAIN CITED IN THREE HIGHWAY CRASHES.

Byline: Patricia Farrell Aidem Staff Writer

SANTA CLARITA - Patches of blue sky began peeking through drifting clouds Friday afternoon, promising sunshine today and through the weekend.

But the biggest storm since the El Nino rampage three years ago didn't leave the region without a fight.

Three crashes Thursday night and Friday morning were blamed in part on roads made slippery by the rain - a total of more than 4 inches.

A SigAlert was called at 6:30 a.m. Friday after a truck pulling two empty flatbeds went out of control and spilled 80 gallons of diesel fuel on the Golden State Freeway near Hasley Canyon Road in Castaic, said Sgt. Mark Odle of the California Highway Patrol.

Trucker Gamaliel Contreras was heading north at about 55 mph, when he failed to negotiate a curve and his truck ran off the right side of the road, rupturing two fuel tanks, Odle said. The cleanup took about 3 1/2 hours.

It was raining at the time, and it appeared Contreras was traveling too fast for the conditions, Odle said. The incident blocked two lanes of traffic.

A short time later, a Palmdale motorist skidded in the rain on the slippery off-ramp from the Antelope Valley Freeway at Placerita Canyon Road in Newhall. Nobody was injured when Solomon Contreras was unable to stop for a stop sign, slid into the intersection and hit a vehicle driven by Enrique Contreras of Canyon Country, said sheriff's Sgt. Clint Bowers of the Santa Clarita station.

Thursday night, a teen-age boy suffered serious, but not life-threatening injuries, when he was hit head-on by a car that went out of control on the wet pavement on Soledad Canyon Road, Bowers said. The unnamed youth was hit by a motorist heading east on Soledad Canyon Road, who was unable to stop at a red light and whose vehicle crossed the center median into oncoming traffic.

The National Weather Service forecast sunny skies for today and Sunday with some patchy morning fog and highs in the low 60s.