Winds wreak unprecedented havoc
Even experienced weather experts were stunned by the destructive, deadly and ultimately rare “bomb cyclone” that touched down in the region Tuesday afternoon.
“Even by the standards of what has turned out to be one of our most extraordinary winter seasons in a very long time, (Tuesday) stands out,” National Weather Service meteorologist Warren Blier wrote in the agency's Area Forecast Discussion early Wednesday morning.
While it rained throughout the Bay Area for most of Tuesday, it was the explosive and violent wind that packed a real punch, tearing down trees, toppling big rigs and roiling the waters with gusts of more than of 81 miles per hour, according to the NWS.
“I'm a scientist. I tend to not be a fan of flamboyant adjectives,” Blier told Bay Area News Group in a phone interview Wednesday morning. “But after the winter we've had, to get something like yesterday, I thought it was extraordinary.”
By 6 a.m. Wednesday morning, the winds had mostly calmed to a constant 12 mph in San Jose, and they were forecast by the NWS to drop even further as the lingering storm dissipated. But after the remarkable storm heads out, the impacts will continue to be felt.
The violent whipping winds uprooted hundreds of trees and broke branches off an untold number more; those falling trees and limbs killed three people Tuesday, in Portola Valley, Rossmoor and Oakland. On the Bay Bridge, a big rig truck toppled over, blocking most eastbound lanes for hours Tuesday night.
According to Contra Costa Fire Protection District spokesperson Steve Hill, emergency crews responded to 100 calls
over a 24-hour period, involving myriad incidents. Among them were downed wires, local small flooding and vehicle crashes. There were no reports of major injuries as a result of the vehicle crashes.
“In the obvious sense that this one caused a fatality, you have to call this storm worse than the last one,” Hill said. “It terms of the number of incidents we had to respond to, I would say it was not as bad. We had more wires down and associated hazards with the last one.”
Thirty-eight wires fell throughout the county in that 24-hour period.
Wind gusts as high as 77 mph stirred up bay waters along the San Francisco Embarcadero, damaging the historic 3rd Street Bridge.
Adjacent to Oracle Stadium, the bridge, also known as the Lefty O'Doul Bridge, suffered from massive splintering on the pedestrian walkway's wooden planks after an industrial barge smashed into it around 4:50 p.m. Tuesday.
According to San Francisco Public Works, a threeyear rehabilitation project for the bridge was completed in 2020. Vehicular traffic flowed through the bridge as normal Wednesday while the pedestrian walkway remained closed for an unknown amount of time.
In Santa Cruz County, the San Lorenzo Valley Unified School district canceled school for all five of its schools Wednesday, citing extensive damage from fallen trees and power lines throughout the Santa Cruz Mountains.
According to the district, Boulder Creek Elementary was completely without power Wednesday, and routes to San Lorenzo Valley Elementary and Middle Schools were closed.
Highway 9, which links Santa Cruz to the South Bay and runs through the middle of Boulder Creek, was shut down in four spots due to weather-related traffic hazards Wednesday, according to the California Highway Patrol. The highway was closed at El Solyo Heights Drive, between Glen Arbor Road and Arboleda Way, between Scenic Drive and Woodland Drive and between Bear Creek Road and Upper Highway 236. Highway 236 was also closed at Jamison Creek road.
Pacific Gas and Electric Company reported that 177,000 Bay Area customers were without power as of 9:30 p.m. Tuesday. That number was as high as 244,000 customers at 6:45 p.m.
As of 10:30 a.m. Wednesday, those figures were down to 78,516 outages for the region. 42,937 of them were in the East Bay while 22,718 were on the Peninsula. 7,232 customers had the lights out in San Francisco and 4,248 were in the South Bay.
On top of the wind, high rain levels left pools of standing water throughout the region with significant rain. 24-hour rain totals as of 7:46 a.m. Wednesday included 0.89 inches in San Jose, 1.24 inches in downtown San Francisco, 1.43 inches in Oakland, 1.06 in Walnut Creek, 1.96 inches in Redwood City and 1.29 inches in Hayward.
The bomb cyclone storm was created by an atypically low pressure system, according to the NWS.
“The thing that's really extraordinary meteorologically, is to have that deep a low pressure system off the coast of San Francisco,” Blier said. “It would be accurate to say `explosively developed' meets the criteria.”
Blier said the storm was “once in every 10 years or rarer,” but acknowledged that the storm's unique nature could be lost among the myriad other rare weather events of a wildly active winter season in the Bay Area.
“Any other season, this would be the extraordinary, memorable event,” Blier said. “Now, this is like, top five.”