Storm Closes Highways, Cuts Electricity

A strong Pacific storm flooded creeks, closed highways, derailed a train and left many New Year’s Day revelers without electricity in Northern California.

Winds as high as 50 mph downed power lines and cut electricity to about 100,000 Pacific Gas & Electric Co. customers by midday, the utility said.

Power was restored to some, but about 62,000 customers across PG&E;’s service area remained without electricity by noon, spokesman Michael McColl said.

About half of those power failures were in the San Francisco Bay Area; others were scattered around Redding in Shasta County and Sebastopol in Sonoma County.

A winter storm warning remained in effect for the Tahoe Basin, where a combination of heavy snow and winds shut down Interstate 80 for a 73-mile stretch west of the California-Nevada line most of the day. It reopened late Thursday with chains mandatory over Donner Summit.

U.S. 50 south of Lake Tahoe was closed intermittently for avalanche control, with chains mandatory for 42 miles west of the state line when it was open.

A westbound Amtrak train was stopped 37 miles west of Truckee, when three axles derailed on two passenger cars of the California Zephyr, according to spokesman Dan Stessel.

He said there had been no injuries among the 300 passengers and crew of about 15 and the train had heat and power, as well as food and water. Crews from Union Pacific railroad, which owns the tracks, were working to get the Zephyr back on the way to Emeryville, near Oakland.

Stessel said the cause was not known, but it was snowing heavily and an eastbound “spreader” engine used to clear snow from the tracks had passed the derailment site a short time earlier, possibly scooping snow onto the westbound tracks.

The National Weather Service also issued a flash-flood watch in Santa Cruz County, where saturated ground gave way and washed out a section of a two-lane road running through the coastal mountains. No one was injured in that landslide, a California Highway Patrol dispatcher said.

Snow from the storm closed Interstate 5 in the far north of the state for several hours, as whiteout conditions hit an approximately 90-mile stretch of road between Redding and Yreka.

It was the third time this week that snow had closed the interstate.

Even as rain tapered off Thursday afternoon in the Bay Area, the weather service reported that another system was forming over the Pacific.

“There’s more to come,” said weather service meteorologist Steve Anderson.

“The storm door is open.”