Storm Heads East After Battering Bay Area
SAN FRANCISCO (CBS SF) – Crews worked Friday to clean up fallen trees, store electrical services and repair washed out roadways after a potent storm front dumped 7 inches of rain in the Santa Cruz Mountains and 6 inches in Guerneville in the North Bay.
While the wet weather had moved on, Mother Nature presented another challenge to Bay Area residents in the form of plunging temperatures.
The National Weather Service issued a freeze warning for overnight Friday night and Saturday night for several Bay Area counties as a blast of cold air from the Gulf of Alaska descended on the region.
Forecasters predicted a dip in the 20s for the inland valley areas with gusty winds that will send temperatures even lower at times.
The heavy rains in Wine County triggered a flood warning from the weather service for some areas of Napa County.
The Napa River – swollen by runoff from Thursday's storms - was expected to crest at 17.7 feet on Friday, causing some minor flooding. Flood stage for the river is 16 feet.
Around the Bay Area, residents were cleaning up fallen branches and trees toppled by a combination of rain and win on Thursday.
Bill Strubing has called Santa Cruz County home for four decades. He said the storm Thursday was no joke.
"It was raining buckets pretty much all day," Strubing said. "One of the few times that it actually lived up to the hype."
He said the scene after Thursday's heavy rains on Bear Creek Road was nothing new.
"This slide has been productive for a while," said Strubing. "They keep band-aiding it, but they're going to have to do a fix here at some point. Just a typical day in the mountains."
In East Palo Alto, a large tree toppled onto two cars in the 1100 block of Beech Street, while a massive 75-foot high cedar crashed into two-story in Danville, a large tree fell onto a garage on Magnolia Ave. in San Anselmo and a large branch damaged a Portola Valley home.
In the Santa Cruz Mountains, crews were removing a mudslide that blocked Bear Creek Road at Ralston Ridge and in Napa Highway 121 from Vichy to Wooden Valley Road was closed after the roadway was washed out by flood waters.
In Marin County, flooding was also an issue.
Flood warning sirens were sounded in the towns of Ross, San Anselmo and Fairfax, and the business district of downtown San Anselmo was evacuated as a precaution during the height of the storm on Thursday.
Some sections of Corte Madera Creek in Ross leaked out onto Sir Francis Drake Boulevard near the Ross/San Anselmo border and caused traffic disturbances.
In Marin's San Geronimo Valley, 22 homes flooded in Woodacre and Forest Knolls. Papermill Creek overflowed in Forest Knolls, flooding homes on Morales, Montezuma and Castro streets and water from road runoff flowed into homes in Woodacre.
Residents in the area self-evacuated except for one woman who needed assistance. The San Geronimo Valley Community Center opened temporarily to provide dry shelter for those who needed it.
In the Sierra Nevada, the Tioga Pass entry point to Yosemite National Park received 35 inches of snow in 24 hours, the weather service said.
Building snowpack in the Sierra is critical for California's water supply after five years of drought.
Roads into Yosemite Valley were open again Friday after being closed overnight due to potential flooding. The Merced River crested below flood stage, resulting in no major damage to park roads or operations.
