Calif. storm causes airline delays, flooded freeways

By MARTH MENDOZA and ELLEN KNICKMEYER ASSOCIATED PRESS

10 years ago

Aidan Stephenson,12, and Conor Stephenson,10, visiting from Phoenix, watch the waves break on Ocean View Blvd., Wednesday, Dec. 10, 2014, in Pacific Grove, Calif. Northern California residents are bracing for a powerful storm that could be the biggest in five years and which prompted the National Weather Service to issue a high wind and flash flood warning. The storm is expected to arrive Wednesday and pelt the region through Thursday. (AP Photo/Monterey Herald, Vern Fisher)

A car and shopping cart are submerged in water at a flooded shopping center Thursday, Dec. 11, 2014, in Healdsburg, Calif. A powerful storm churned through Northern California Thursday, knocking out power to tens of thousands and delaying commuters while soaking the region with much-needed rain. (AP Photo/Eric Risberg)

Mike Whitesone tosses a sandbag onto his pickup truck for use around his home in the Sacramento suburb of North Highlands, Calif., Wednesday, Dec. 10, 2014. Sandbags and sand were provided in flood-prone areas of Sacramento County for residents to use to protect their homes in preparation for a powerful storm that is expected to hit Northern California Thursday. (AP Photo/Rich Pedroncelli)

Sandbags are brought in to help protect businesses, Wednesday Dec. 10, 2014 in Santa Rosa, Calif. Northern California residents are bracing for a powerful storm that could be the biggest in five years and which prompted the National Weather Service to issue a high wind and flash flood warning. The storm is expected to arrive Wednesday and pelt the region through Thursday. (AP Photo/The Press Democrat, Kent Porter)

Hudson Gilbert, 4, carries a sandbag while helping his mother, Janessa Gilbert, fill sand bags at an area fire station in the Sacramento suburb of North Highlands, Calif., Wednesday, Dec. 10, 2014. Sandbags and sand were provided in flood-prone areas of Sacramento County for residents to use to protect their homes in anticipation of a powerful storm that is expected to hit Northern California Thursday. (AP Photo/Rich Pedroncelli)

Kathryn Olson rests on a sandbag before carrying it to her vehicle to be used at her home in the Sacramento suburb of North Highlands, Calif., Wednesday, Dec. 10, 2014. Sandbags and sand were provided in flood- prone areas of Sacramento County for residents to use to protect their homes in anticipation of a powerful storm that is expected to hit Northern California Thursday. (AP Photo/Rich Pedroncelli)

Aidan Perez, left, 12, and Christopher Dow, right, 11, use a shopping cart to get around the flooded parking lot of a shopping center Thursday, Dec. 11, 2014, in Healdsburg, Calif. A powerful storm churned through Northern California Thursday, knocking out power to tens of thousands and delaying commuters while soaking the region with much-needed rain. (AP Photo/Eric Risberg)

A van navigates a flooded roadway in Berkeley, Calif., on Thursday, Dec. 11, 2014. A powerful storm churned through Northern California Thursday, knocking out power to tens of thousands and delaying commuters while soaking the region with much-needed rain. (AP Photo/Noah Berger)

This photo provided by Robert Gower shows a manhole cover getting blown out by water rushing under a street in San Francisco street on Thursday, Dec. 11, 2014. A powerful storm churned through Northern California Thursday, knocking out power to tens of thousands and delaying commuters while soaking the region with much-needed rain. (AP Photo/Robert Gower) MANDATORY CREDIT

Mark Kunze of San Bruno pushes his stalled vehicle out of the flooded intersection of Airport Blvd. and Grand Ave. in South San Francisco, on Thursday, Dec. 11, 2014. Several vehicles stalled in and around the intersection after driving through the deep water. A powerful storm churned through the San Francisco Bay Area on Thursday, knocking out power to tens of thousands and delaying commuters while bringing a soaking of much needed rain. (AP Photo/Alex Washburn)

A group of girls laugh while running down a flooded street Thursday, Dec. 11, 2014, in Healdsburg, Calif. A powerful storm churned through Northern California Thursday, knocking out power to tens of thousands and delaying commuters while soaking the region with much-needed rain. (AP Photo/Eric Risberg)

Hailey Thistle, 8, walks into a flooded parking lot at a shopping center Thursday, Dec. 11, 2014, in Healdsburg, Calif. A powerful storm churned through Northern California Thursday, knocking out power to tens of thousands and delaying commuters while soaking the region with much-needed rain. (AP Photo/Eric Risberg)

A man passes the Transamerica building as rain pounds San Francisco’s North Beach district on Thursday, Dec. 11, 2014. A powerful storm churned through Northern California Thursday, knocking out power to tens of thousands and delaying commuters while soaking the region with much-needed rain. (AP Photo/Noah Berger)

A man rides his bicycle through the flooded intersection of Airport Blvd. and Grand Ave. in South San Francisco, on Thursday, Dec. 11, 2014. A powerful storm churned through the San Francisco Bay Area on Thursday, knocking out power to tens of thousands and delaying commuters while bringing a soaking of much needed rain. (AP Photo/Alex Washburn)

A bus passes through a flooded roadway Thursday, Dec. 11, 2014, in Mill Valley, Calif. A storm expected to be one of the windiest and rainiest in five years swept across the San Francisco Bay Area on Thursday, knocking out power to tens to thousands and delaying travel by air, train and ferry. Pacific Gas & Electric is reporting outages are widespread across the Bay Area due to weather, but officials weren’t immediately available to give a specific number of outages.(AP Photo/Eric Risberg)

Sean Newton rides a skim board at the beach Thursday, Dec. 11, 2014, in Seal Beach, Calif. High winds and heavy rains caused flooding and landslides in the Pacific Northwest on Wednesday, and the storm churned through the San Francisco Bay Area on Thursday, knocking out power to tens of thousands and delaying commuters while bringing a soaking of much needed rain. (AP Photo/Jae C. Hong)

This photo provided by Yvonne Pham shows city employee working to clear the drains of a flooded San Francsico street on Thursday, Dec. 11, 2014. A powerful storm churned through Northern California Thursday, knocking out power to tens of thousands and delaying commuters while soaking the region with much-needed rain.(AP Photo/Yvonne Pham)

SAN FRANCISCO — Strong gales and sheets of rain that knocked out electricity, flooded freeways and toppled trees in Northern California churned Thursday to a slide-prone Southern California bracing for its own beating.

“It’s a big storm, as we expected, and it’s headed south with very powerful winds and heavy rainfall,” said National Weather Service meteorologist Will Pi. Its strong winds felled a tree in southern Oregon, killing a homeless man, 40-year-old Phillip Crosby, who was sleeping on a trail.

Los Angeles should expect rain by the end of the day. Already, one apartment complex in a spot prone to mudslides in Riverside was evacuated. In the San Bernardino National Forest, lumber workers were loading concrete weights onto the stacks to keep them from blowing away, and piling sandbags in front of their shop doors to stave off floodwater.

“We’re getting ready this afternoon because it’s supposed to come in tonight,” said Jim Maddox, a worker at Rim Forest Lumber. “You expect the worse and hope for the best.”

The San Bernardino Mountains have been razed by wildfires and were already doused by a storm last week, making them particularly vulnerable to mud flows.

The Port of Los Angeles is ready to take on the storm, spokesman Phillip Sanfield said. “If heavy rains come, we’ve got construction crews to check on the docks; police can deal with flooding streets,” he said.

Denise George, who sells boats in Marina Del Rey, worried mostly about the wind.

“We make sure the halyards are secure, the canvasses are fastened so nothing gets blown off or opened up, so yes we are battening down the hatches for sure.”

Throughout the San Francisco Bay Area Thursday, waves slammed onto waterfronts, ferries were bound to their docks, some airplanes were grounded and many schools canceled classes.

Gusting winds had motorists tightly gripping their steering wheels on the Golden Gate Bridge, where managers created a buffer zone to prevent head-on collisions by swerving cars.

The iconic suspension bridge is engineered to swing in cross winds, and engineers were standing by, but “the concern we have right now is more about vehicles,” spokeswoman Priya David Clemens said.

An elementary school student was trapped for about 15 minutes when an 80-foot tree fell on him in Santa Cruz. Rescuers with chain saws freed his arm and he was taken to a hospital in good condition.

Close to a quarter-million customers lost power in Northern California. Pacific Gas & Electric’s online map showed lights out over thousands of square miles, from Humboldt near the Oregon border to Big Sur on the Central Coast.

There were multiple accidents on flooded roads, and several trees crunched cars, but serious injuries reported. Many highways were closed, including California’s critical north-south Interstate 5 thruway.

“A lot of people took the day off,” said CalTrans spokesman Bob Haus. “That’s a good thing.”

This “Pineapple Express” storm blowing down the coast was unusual not only for its force, but for the warmth it brought to San Francisco, which was a balmy 60 degrees, about 5 degrees above average for this time of year.

“I know it’s a big storm supposedly, but they’re treating it like it’s a hurricane,” Malcolm Oubre said as he disembarked from the ferry he rode to his job as an administrative assistant in San Francisco.

Farther north, part of downtown Healdsburg was under two or three feet of water, and teenagers drove truckes through a flooded Safeway grocery store parking lot, trying to make waves for kayakers. Grocery shoppers, meanwhile, trudged through water to get supplies.

East Coast kids revel in snow days, but closures are rare on the West Coast, so the cancellation of Thursday’s classes was a novelty for dozens of schools in San Francisco, Oakland, Berkeley, and Santa Cruz County.

Surfers welcomed big, choppy swells — the same high seas that sent towering sprays of water into the air as they crashed against waterfronts in San Francisco and Monterey on Thursday.

Ski resorts in the northern Sierra Nevada — where schools and roads were closed by whiteout conditions and power outages — were hoping for three feet of snow once it all settles. On Thursday, wind gusts up to 140 mph whipped through mountain passes, damaging homes in the Lake Tahoe area and grounding commercial airline flights in Reno, Nevada.

This has been a particularly wet storm, with rains expected to continue through Friday evening across much of California, and some rivers and creeks were rising fast.

California’s farmers needed the dousing, but would need more storms this size to even begin to recover from a record drought.