Weird Bay Area Weather Continues With Thunderstorms, Lightning
BAY AREA (CBS SF) -- The peculiar weather around the Bay Area continued Monday evening with reports of lightning strikes in the South Bay and thunderstorms across the region.
The San Mateo Police Department was alerting residents late Monday night to shelter in place due to dangerous, live downed wires caused by the storm.
A KPIX camera crew in Santa Cruz captured lightning strikes at around 5 p.m.
A short time later, there were reports of additional lightning strikes along the 680 corridor in Pleasanton, San Ramon and Dublin.
CHP in Redwood City also made note of the precipitation, something the Bay Area doesn't usually experience when the temperatures are so warm.
KPIX Sports Director Dennis O'Donnell also shot video of lighting over AT&T Park Monday night. The lightning and rain ended up delaying the start of the game.
The sudden downpours, thunder and lightning were new additions to the uncharacteristically warm and humid weather the Bay Area has been experiencing for the past several days.
Strong winds blew up the coast early Monday morning from Monterey causing power outages and downing trees and power lines, fire officials and a meteorologist with the National Weather Service said.
NWS Meteorologist Drew Peterson, who studied and experienced the unexpected event, said he woke up at about 1:45 a.m. to hear the sound of howling winds at his home in Pacific Grove.
The high winds eventually made their way to San Jose, Napa Valley and east to San Pablo Bay. Sustained winds reached up to 35 mph, according to Peterson.
The hardest hit areas appear to have been in Santa Clara County around Los Gatos and Campbell, where fire officials received more than 30 calls about tree and pole fires and downed trees and wires.
The wind also caused about 11,000 PG&E customers to lose power in the South Bay.
"Earlier today it was an all hands on deck situation," PG&E spokeswoman Tamar Sarkissian said.
PG&E officials have brought in crews from around the area to help with the outage.
As of 10 p.m., the South Bay had only about 600 customers without power, but the East Bay still had over 4,400 outages, largely concentrated around Fremont. The peninsula had over 2,900 outages, mostly concentrated around the city of San Mateo.
Across the Bay Area, over 8,000 PG&E customers were without power Monday night.
