New Storm Beats Up N. California

A potent storm set to drench Southern California early this morning hammered the northern part of the state Thursday, dropping temperatures to near freezing on the coast, stalling traffic and tripping power supplies from Mendocino to Monterey.

The gusty wind and torrential rain was expected to arrive in the Los Angeles area about midnight, with the heaviest rainfall between 2 a.m. and 5 a.m., said Mark Lenz, a National Weather Service meteorologist.

Up to two inches of rain was expected along the coast and between two to four inches in the foothills. Lenz said the storm was likely to diminish by tonight, with heavier rain returning by Saturday afternoon.

As of 8:30 p.m. Thursday, the storm was lashing Interstate 5, the state’s principal north-south highway, in the Tehachapi Mountains with heavy rain, sleet and winds gusting up to 60 mph.

“It’s not going to be a good situation up here tonight,” said Fran Jensen, at Interstate Towing in Lebec. “The rain is going to be freezing on the street.”

Power companies Thursday braced for possible outages. Southern California Edison stockpiled fuses, transformers, wire and other supplies, readying for a repeat of the service disruption to 126,000 customers during the storm that hit Southern California Monday.

Parts of the north were hit by outages Thursday. According to Pacific Gas & Electric, Northern California’s largest utility company, more than 67,400 customers were without power by Thursday evening. The storm began to subside in most areas Thursday afternoon.

For many coastal range communities, the violent storm, accompanied by wind gusts of more than 60 mph, was the second blow in less than a week. A heavy winter storm that began last Friday softened the coast with downpours that caused several Northern California waterways, including the Russian, Eel and Navarro rivers, to reach flood stage.

According to PG&E; spokesman Brian Swanson, 19,000 customers were still without power from that first storm when the new front swept in shortly after noon Thursday.

Among the hardest hit communities was Carmel Heights, an affluent hillside enclave with 450 people on California 1 three miles south of Carmel.

“This has been a challenging week,” said Andrew Davidson, general manager of the luxury 142-room Hyatt Highlands Inn, which was without electricity for two days earlier in the week and again Thursday. Davidson spent the afternoon distributing 12-hour glow sticks to the rooms, which cost up to $1,000 a night.

Carmel Heights resident Sharon Kolbrener said she and her husband lost power in the earlier storm and had it knocked out again Thursday morning when the high winds toppled giant oak and Monterey pine trees.

“It had been very dry here,” Kolbrener said from her candlelit home. “The first storm saturated and loosened the soil, and the winds this morning knocked down trees right and left, crumbling the power lines.”

A repair crew trying to reach the trouble area was stranded, Swanson said, when large trees fell on both sides of their vehicle.

“We had to pull the crew out for a while until it was deemed safe,” he said.

To the relief of National Weather Service meteorologists who feared flash-flooding, temperatures were much lower in Thursday’s storm. This meant that most of the precipitation above 1,000 feet was snow, which limited the rush of water downhill to swollen rivers. Snow was recorded in the Sonoma Valley as low as 100 feet, covering recently harvested vineyards with a white blanket.

Among the hardest hit spots were the Point Arena and Gualala communities on the Mendocino coast. Gualala, which in the local Native American language means “water flowing down,” lived up to its name Thursday as it was drenched with downpours and pelted with hailstones.

Weather Service spokeswoman Kayda Muckey in Sacramento said the heaviest rainfall was recorded in the Bay Area city of Vallejo, at a rate of two inches an hour.

“So far, we’ve managed to get by with a few traffic accidents and some local flooding,” said Vallejo Police Lt. Dave Jackson.