‘Bomb cyclone’ lashes region
More wet days, cold nights in the forecast
It wasn’t an unprecedented event, but the wind storm that passed through Northern California on Tuesday was still one of the strongest recorded and caused quite a bit of damage, including cutting off power to thousands of people.
As of Wednesday afternoon, 23,000 customers in Humboldt County were still without power as a result of 166 outages, said Megan McFarland, spokesperson for utility company Pacific Gas & Electric. That included eight outages impacting 3,650 customers in McKinleyville, nine outages impacting 165 customers in Fortuna, 29 outages impacting 2,690 customers in Arcata and 58 outages impacting 3,000 customers in Eureka, she said.
“All of these outages are stormrelated,” McFarland said. “We don’t have an estimated time for restoration. This was a pretty in
tense storm so our crews are doing their best to repair lines as quickly and safely as possible.”
McFarland said she wanted to remind customers if they see a wire down, to assume it’s energized, stay away from it and call 911.
Wind gusts reached around 45 miles per hour in Eureka on Tuesday, with a high of 80 miles per hour recorded in the hills south of Ferndale, said Scott Carroll, a meteorologist at the National Weather Service in Eureka. Northwestern California as a whole saw about 2.5 inches of rain and the most snowfall recorded was north of Weaverville at about 16 inches, he said.
“It definitely wasn’t typical,” Carroll said of the storm. “We usually get strong storms during fall and winter, but this was actually one of the strongest areas of low pressure that’s ever been recorded along the northern coast of California.
It wasn’t unprecedented, Carroll said, but “it was a pretty strong storm.”
Among those impacted by the outages was the Eureka Natural Foods grocery store in McKinleyville. Tyson Ritter, Eureka Natural Foods’ marketing manager, said the store had to adjust its normal Thanksgiving routine because of the outage, along with having to sell refrigerated goods for 50% off through Tuesday and selling only dry goods Wednesday.
“Normally today we’d have the kitchen open,” Ritter said. “We’d be serving Thanksgiving food out of that store and they’re not able to do that because of the outage. A lot of our Thanksgiving meal prep has had to shift to our Eureka store.”
It’s hard to say how much the store has experienced in losses yet, Ritter said, but the longer the power is out, “the more impactful it will be.”
Besides the outages, the storm caused other types of damage, including dropping trees and poles in roadways.
As of Tuesday night, the Humboldt area California Highway Patrol received approximately 362 calls for service, mostly related to debris in the roadways, compared to 134 the day before, according to a press release from the agency. The local Cal Fire emergency command center received a record 90 calls for service during the storm, according to a release.
“Our crews have been very busy,” said Scott Ellsmore, traffic project manager with Eureka’s Public Works Department.
The largest number of calls the department is getting are related to flooding and tree branches falling in the roadways and across sidewalks, Ellsmore said. The wind ended up turning traffic signals to point in the wrong direction and flooding caused some of them to start flashing, he said.
“It’s pretty common, especially with first storm, to get a lot of calls,” Ellsmore said.
Because it’s still pretty early on in the year, there are a lot of leaves still on trees, Ellsmore said, so during an early storm event all of those leaves get flushed down and start clogging drains and culverts, creating ponding and flooding.
The city always provides access to sandbags during storm events like these, Ellsmore said. If people want to get sandbags to fill up and use, they can get them at the Corporation Yard on West 14th Street.
The weather will be gradually improving and Thanksgiving Day and Friday “are probably not going to be too bad,” Carroll said. It’ll be sunny, but cool, especially at night when it should dip below-freezing temperatures for the next couple of nights, he said.
“The weather goes downhill again late Friday night and the weekend’s going to be rainy again,” Carroll said. “If you have anything to do outdoors, definitely Thursday and Friday would be the days to do them.”