I have never seen a storm exactly like this one. When I got in my 4 wheel drive Tundra to assess if trees had blocked all the roads into town or not from the Beach where I live the first thing was that all the paved roads were like rivers. So, immediately I realized I had to drive really slow. Then anyone driving was kind of uncertain and somewhat squirrelly in the ways they were driving so I had to watch out not only for fallen limbs, roads that were like rivers but also a lot of confused drivers as well.
So, though I have seen ALL roads to where I live blocked before with power outages that lasted 3 to 5 days from fallen trees where we couldn't get out at all I had never seen all the roads like rivers literally and the nearest golf Course literally like a thousand rivers or rivulets coming off it. So, I'm not surprised that there is a flood warning everywhere north of Monterey County up to the California Border with Oregon. We had to send our housekeeper home today so she could get out after about half of the ways out had been closed by fallen trees. Hopefully no one was injured by the trees falling here or by the power lines and phone lines and cable lines brought down too. Luckily the 1000 people without power in my area or the 80,000 businesses and households in downtown San Francisco were my house so so far at least we haven't lost power even though within 30 miles of us they got 65 to 85 mile per hour winds. I think the highest wind gust here was about 50 miles per hour and we were lucky enough to take our biggest dead tree down about 24 hours or so before this storm hit so we were very happy not to be the cause of about 25 to 50 households without power today if our dead tree fell before we had it taken down.
I drove through water 2 feet deep but I had enough ground clearance because I have a 4 wheel drive truck but it was at or above my wheel hubs which is about 2 or more feet deep. However, I noticed people that went through it weren't as lucky and one soul's car had stalled but from the looks of him he was local.
I had already promised tourists to come back for them after their rental car had stalled near a golf course in too deep of water. They weren't entirely sure where they were and the other problem is many of the ways of getting back into the larger cities had been cut off already by 2 feet or more water coming down roads or trees falling across roads or both. After I tried to get the CHP patrolling the beaches for flooding and high waves to get to these folks (I think they were from Georgia here visiting the ocean) I couldn't find him and I had problems myself getting back to the stranded tourists as two of the normal routes to get to them had flooded roads and trees across. Finally I got back to their water stalled car which they had pushed off the road by then and out of the water I asked them if I could take them to a HOTEL and Restaurant nearby as I noticed one of them looked a little hypothermic from sitting there without a car heater to stay warm with. Neither of them seemed dressed for the weather either. So, they were happy to find their way to a nearby fancy hotel and restaurant to warm up and have something to eat while they waited 3 hours for a replacement car.
Meanwhile my wife called to say there is a leak in my daughter's bedroom so I needed to get home again. The waves were not above 10 feet tall at least on the west facing beaches even though from a south facing beaches they might be 20 or more feet tall because the storm is coming from the South and south west. So, the wind is coming from a South or South west direction too like the storms are from the Hawaii area. There appear to be more storms on the way now starting with next Monday I believe as well. Hopefully, the next one won't bring as much as this one did because this one already did a lot of damage so I hope there is enough time to recover for most people in between storms now.
I think it is possible that the El Nino has arrived when houses fall into the oceans form erosion and flooding gets pretty bad all over the northern Part of California and sometimes in Southern California too.
Another amazing thing I reported earlier in another blog is that Lake Tahoe had 7 foot high waves which is amazing for a place that would almost never get something higher than 6 inch waves or so during most of the year because it is a 6000 foot high freshwater lake up in the Sierras.
Also, now many road closures including two school children hit by a falling tree. One went to the hospital and the other had more minor injuries. Many cars have been crushed by trees within 40 miles of where I live too and now more and more car accidents are occurring and so more and more roads are closing for various reasons too.
In the next town about 20 to 30 miles away there are at least 12 to 24 houses flooded now and people all had to be evacuated because a levee broke from too much water. So now there are somewhere between 80,000 and 100,000 households and businesses in Northern California or more now without power for now until they get some help. And because of when the storm ends sometime in the middle of the night to next morning or noon depending on where you are located on the coast, many areas will not send in Electrical Linemen to make repairs until the rain stops because it is just too dangerous for the men while rain is still coming down regularly. So, it may be 24 hours or more before most of these people get linemen in to replace power poles and to put their power back up as well.
If you have ever worked around 1000 volts you know how dangerous this is with rain still coming down. Your likelihood of working on 1000 volts while rain is coming down and dying is very high, because you can't always shut it off to work on it without shutting whole other neighborhoods off while you fix it. And those people would be very upset at this point too to have their neighborhoods shut down so you can fix other neighborhoods nearby. So this might mean you are working with 1000 volts hot which is extremely dangerous whether or not there is rain but sort of impossible outside to do with rain coming down safely because water can conduct 1000 volts quite a distance to kill or maim if it is on. So, I can see why many neighborhoods with trees down and power lines down won't have their power repaired and back on at least until the storm is over and rain stops falling out of the sky.
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