Little damage, flooding from weekend weather
Morgan Hill – While many areas in Northern California suffered floods and power outrages, Morgan Hill felt the lighter side of weekend storms in the form of rain-drenched streets and yards littered with tree branches.
“We had a lot of full creeks and a lot of alarms going off but no flooding,” said Mike DiMarco, spokesman for the Santa Clara Valley Water District.
He said the weekend storm, which according to the National Weather Service dropped 2.5 inches of rain on the area between Saturday and Sunday afternoons, helped keep water reserves on track.
“The reservoirs down in South County are where they should be this time of year,” DiMarco said. “Right now they’re at about 60 percent full.”
The weather stormed through Morgan Hill over the weekend, but caused little damage.
A giant oak tree in front of 585 West Edmundson Avenue just missed crushing the roof of a house around 11pm Sunday night.
Instead, it fell across the yard and took out the fence.
Porche Ballard, 58, who lives in the house was not hurt and didn’t know how lucky she was until the morning.
“I thought it was just raccoons on porch,” Ballard said. “I didn’t know what happened until I looked out this morning. But I’ve always wanted a treehouse. It wasn’t raining that much at the time, I guess the dirt just got soft and it gave away.”
Ballard’s brother came over from Santa Cruz Monday to help her clear the tree.
Morgan Hill Public Works responded to five calls over the weekend that Mori Struve, Deputy Director of Public Works of Operations, said were relatively minor.
“We had one person on call this weekend, and he was able to handle them by himself,” Struve said. “We were able to fix them quickly. None of the roads were blocked, and they didn’t back up traffic.”
On Burnett Avenue and Monterey Road, there was some standing water that accumulated. Leaves were cleared over the grate at the underpass on Monterey. And the grate had to be cleared under Monterey and Hale Avenue.
In the North West portion of Morgan Hill off of Llagas Road on Castle Hill Drive, there were some rocks and debris that had to be cleared off a road. And on Del Monte Avenue, there was a small tree that came down and had to be removed.
The weekend weather hit other areas harder, with strong winds and heavy rain causing flooding, traffic accidents and power outages from Monterey to the Oregon border.
Severe thunderstorm warnings were issued for San Francisco, Marin, San Mateo and Napa counties Sunday morning, with wind speeds clocking as high as 71 miles per hour on Angel Island in San Francisco Bay, according to the National Weather Service.
The storm brought an average of 3 to 4 inches of rainfall in the Bay Area, with Big Sur and parts of the Santa Cruz Mountains collecting more than 7 inches in the 24-hour period ending 4pm Sunday, said NWS meteorologist Rick Canepa.
The storm then moved east to the Central Valley near Sacramento and continued on to the Sierra Nevada, where it dropped as much as 3 feet of snow, snarling travel through the mountain range but improving ski resort conditions.
Most of Sunday’s severe weather warnings were lifted by mid-afternoon, although wet weather was expected to continue until Monday evening.
More than 50,000 Pacific Gas and Electric customers in the Bay Area were without power in the late afternoon, a number that was brought down to 34,000 by Sunday night, said PG&E spokesman Paul Moreno.
“Lightning damaged some of our overhead equipment and brought down our power lines,” he said. “As we have restored power, there have been fresh outages as well.”
There also were scattered outages in the Central and North Coast, but the hardest hit area was San Mateo County and San Francisco, Moreno said.
The California Highway Patrol reported an increase in traffic accidents and flooding due to the storm, Officer Ben Chaney said.
Dianna Henderson of the National Weather Service expected another storm system to hit the area today, though she predicted less rain than over the weekend.
She predicted “we should be pretty much out of it Friday morning and looking at patchy valley fog.”
Henderson said the holiday weekend would be partly cloudy with temperatures in the upper ’50s and lower ’60s.
Staff writer Nathan Mixter contributed to this report.
