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"Storm of the decade" to hit NorCal on Thurs w/ hurricane force winds in Sierra mtns

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C

Curler

Unconfirmed Member
charlequin said:
It's really just the dissonance between the weather that's happening and the problematic results that occur. Here in San Jose it rained all day but never got above what I'd call the high end of moderate rain at any given time, and there was no wind to speak of, so from my perspective it would barely count as inclement weather -- you wouldn't even get this on the news in New England.

At the same time, because California doesn't get these storms that often, the results are quite a bit greater -- the ground can't absorb water so the flooding starts much faster, and the highways aren't built for wet driving so the commutes (even where nothing floods) are much slower and less safe. I'll probably give people a bit of a hard time tomorrow (or Monday....) but in reality it's good that people stayed home -- it's much better for everyone if people can make sensible decisions to stay home in poor weather, both for their own safety and to make things safer for the people who do need to go out.
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Yeah I mean, some places were definitely hit worse than others. Lots of uneven ground without good drainage too, so there's tons of deep, pocketed puddles around that could really wreak vehicles. The soil can only absorb so much water at once, so it's no surprise when I saw photos of big trees being uprooted from all the loose dirt.

And yes, traffic was low and that's good. Traffic reports had a TON of car accidents early in the morning, because people will take chances in this sort of weather (and often forget you can NOT drive the same as in dry weather), so despite people on here saying people were "scared", the less traffic out there, the better.
 
M

Marty Chinn

Member
Curler said:
These two replies in this order work. I don't get how people don't think that mass amounts of flooding and power outage doesn't = a pretty big storm (for the area). This is not the Midwest or East Coast, so we aren't exactly prepared for this sort of thing.
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I'm a native to the area. Lived in Sunnyvale most of my life and in San Jose for the last 9 years. The storm itself, at least in the south bay is anything but big. The aftermath from a lack of rain might be taking a bigger hit in some areas more than usual, but this is not the harsh storm that the media was portraying. It wasn't even hard rain. There's no wind. This is overblown by what they were claiming was going to happen. It's been way worse because I can think of the times where the rain was coming down hard and the wind blowing and much bigger and greater power outages as a result since I moved to where I currently am. Today is something I wouldn't even blink at other than noting that the rain has been constant had the media not hyped up this storm.
 
Y

yayaba

Member
News reports in So. Cal are starting the hype train all over again. Stay safe Southland.

It finally stopped raining here on the peninsula... just drizzling now. That was like 18+ hours of rain.
 
U

Uchigatana

Member
Nothing special happened in the South Bay other than the roof from the Capitol Expressway safeway partially collapsed. Overall, we just got a whopping 3 inches of rain in San Jose. I don't know when was the last time San Jose actually had 3 inches of rain in 24 hours.
 
S

studyguy

Member
Southern California checking in. Raining so hard you would think it's a hurricane outside right now.

Holy shit it's so LOUD
 
S

speculawyer

Member
charlequin said:
Managed to walk to the Sharks game from work and then back home afterwards entirely without incident. I expected fewer people at the game, but then I also expected to hit more than middling rain, no wind, and a few spots of 6-8 inch puddles downtown tonight.
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Well damn, you should check into NHL GAF.

I hope you snuck down to some good seats if you had tickets to cheap seats like I did.
3AQmK.gif
There were lots of people that did not show up.
 
O

Oblivion

Fetishing muscular manly men in skintight hosery
Winds have gone as high as 35 mph here in Los Angeles/Northridge. Not exactly hurricane level, but that's waaaaay higher than anything I've witnessed before. The most before today was around 16-17 mph and I thought that shit was pretty bad.

What the fuck? This sort of thing should not be happening in Southern fricken' California!
 
X

xenorevlis

Member
So yeah, aside from several freeway floods, some hard rain earlier in the day, and a bunch of flash flood warnings, wasn't bad at all.

Ended up working on some visual effects longer than I had wanted to, so now I don't get to fall asleep to rain. Yep... Its not even raining over here anymore. Saratoga area of San Jose. Ah well... Night Cali GAF
 
C

Clockw0rk

Member
was driving home on the 605 a half hour or so ago and saw heaps of tumbleweeds everywhere, esp the offramp. was really weird. it might be the most tumbleweeds ive ever seen irl
 
O

op_ivy

Fallen Xbot (cannot continue gaining levels in this class)
woke up to about 8 inches of snow (lake almanor, 4500'). broke a pin in my snow blower and apparently someone broke our snow shovel last year but never mentioned it. its beautiful out though. gotta get to work.
 
R

Ryck

Member
SoCal (San Diego) winds and rain like I've seldom ever seen in this area. Wind knocking shit over in backyard is why I am awake right now.
 
R

Rur0ni

Member
It's so funny seeing some of these responses after spending most of my life in the south, but now that I'm in California for the past year I understand it. I wish this was a once a month occurrence at least to change things up.
 
S

studyguy

Member
So damage from last night, apparently a warehouse next to my dad's work had its ceiling completely collapse. Crazy. Good thing no one was in the building.
 
X

XiaNaphryz

LATIN, MATRIPEDICABUS, DO YOU SPEAK IT
Marty Chinn said:
I'm a native to the area. Lived in Sunnyvale most of my life and in San Jose for the last 9 years. The storm itself, at least in the south bay is anything but big. The aftermath from a lack of rain might be taking a bigger hit in some areas more than usual, but this is not the harsh storm that the media was portraying. It wasn't even hard rain. There's no wind. This is overblown by what they were claiming was going to happen. It's been way worse because I can think of the times where the rain was coming down hard and the wind blowing and much bigger and greater power outages as a result since I moved to where I currently am. Today is something I wouldn't even blink at other than noting that the rain has been constant had the media not hyped up this storm.
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But a lot of what was predicted did happen in the Bay Area. Maybe not in your specific area, but I think the warnings were warranted - if a lot of people didn't use sandbags, I wouldn't be surprised we'd see a lot more damage in some places.

Are you saying they shouldn't have bothered mentioning anything at all because some parts of the area would be perfectly fine? From everything I read and heard, I'd have been surprised if the South Bay was really affected much outside of some minor street flooding here and there. It was clear which parts of the Bay would have more issues.
 
M

Marty Chinn

Member
XiaNaphryz said:
But a lot of what was predicted did happen in the Bay Area. Maybe not in your specific area, but I think the warnings were warranted - if a lot of people didn't use sandbags, I wouldn't be surprised we'd see a lot more damage in some places.

Are you saying they shouldn't have bothered mentioning anything at all because some parts of the area would be perfectly fine? From everything I read and heard, I'd have been surprised if the South Bay was really affected much outside of some minor street flooding here and there. It was clear which parts of the Bay would have more issues.
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I think they shouldn't have sensationalized it and over blown what was going to happen. Warnings are great, especially pointing out that because we haven't had a lot of rain recently, that will have a bigger impact than usual for similar rain conditions that we've had in the past. But calling it "Storm of the Decade"? One source even called it hurricane like conditions. Schools shut down or closed early. People stayed home over this because of how the media hyped it. I think it's one thing to warn people, but they sensationalized it and blew it out of proportion. Heck, our Internet in our office is kind of a crappy setup where it needs line of sight to beam it to us from our ISP. That stayed rock solid when harsh wind and rain conditions in the past have caused interference. I was totally expecting our Internet to be dropping out with what they were saying and we didn't see any of that.
 
X

XiaNaphryz

LATIN, MATRIPEDICABUS, DO YOU SPEAK IT
Marty Chinn said:
But calling it "Storm of the Decade"?
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Looking at rainfall totals, it's the largest storm we've had so far this decade yes.

One source even called it hurricane like conditions.
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It specifically referred to wind conditions in the Sierras, and they did apparently get winds in the 100+ mph range.

Schools shut down or closed early.
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Given how long some teachers have to commute to their schools, how some places had power issues, and the road conditions, this shouldn't be surprising. Where I live there wasn't a lot of issues, but there were plenty in the surrounding area trying to get here. A few teachers couldn't make it at my kid's school and so they had to split up some classes and have them sit in with different teachers.
 
S

studyguy

Member
Not even in Northern California but an entire warehouse ceiling collapsed under the weight of the rain fall near me. It was certainly a much, much harder storm than anything we've had in recent memory of at least 5 or so years. I can't imagine what it was like up north where it was all day.
 
C

Curler

Unconfirmed Member
Marty Chinn said:
I think they shouldn't have sensationalized it and over blown what was going to happen. Warnings are great, especially pointing out that because we haven't had a lot of rain recently, that will have a bigger impact than usual for similar rain conditions that we've had in the past. But calling it "Storm of the Decade"? One source even called it hurricane like conditions. Schools shut down or closed early. People stayed home over this because of how the media hyped it. I think it's one thing to warn people, but they sensationalized it and blew it out of proportion. Heck, our Internet in our office is kind of a crappy setup where it needs line of sight to beam it to us from our ISP. That stayed rock solid when harsh wind and rain conditions in the past have caused interference. I was totally expecting our Internet to be dropping out with what they were saying and we didn't see any of that.
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It can be tough to predict weather though, since things can change just like that. Sounds like the mountains up north DID get strong winds. Adding the "Storm of the Decade" bit is more just the media tagline, so yeah they always like being gimmicky like that. It's only in ten years too, which really kind of drops the importance of the phrase, as far as I'm concerned :p "Century" would've meant something REALLY big.

Regardless, I think it was GOOD schools were closed. That's less people driving around, and less accidents since many places were clearly flooded. The less traffic in weather conditions like this, the better. Colleges/universities WERE open though, but with fewer people going, due to finals week.


EDIT: beat, but yeah points made.
 
C

Curler

Unconfirmed Member
XiaNaphryz said:
Not all of them, the university my wife works at was closed yesterday due to flooded road conditions.
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Of course. All of the ones on the side of the peninsula seemed fine yesterday, but there would be some located in some of the worse areas.

Bottom line, is that it's all a place-by-place basis. Sandbagging sure was important in some places! One business owner on the news underplayed it and thought it wouldn't be a bad storm, since they usually aren't but sandbagged... just in case. Still had water leaking into their business.
 
D

dakkumauji

Member
Curler said:
Regardless, I think it was GOOD schools were closed. That's less people driving around, and less accidents since many places were clearly flooded. The less traffic in weather conditions like this, the better. Colleges/universities WERE open though, but with fewer people going, due to finals week.
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CCSF and SFSU were both closed yesterday.

Finals haven't started for everyone yet either. Some places start finals next week.
 
C

Curler

Unconfirmed Member
simplayer said:
...in the mountains.

But ya, overhyped.

The results of the storm weren't great in some areas, but the storm itself wasn't much.
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Seeing flooded regions, downed trees, power outages, yeah I'd say the storm DID quite a bit of damage for a "small storm". I'm not sure what people were expecting? Flash floods did indeed happen, like the warnings called for.
 
G

gcubed

Member
XiaNaphryz said:
Looking at rainfall totals, it's the largest storm we've had so far this decade yes.



It specifically referred to wind conditions in the Sierras, and they did apparently get winds in the 100+ mph range.



Given how long some teachers have to commute to their schools, how some places had power issues, and the road conditions, this shouldn't be surprising. Where I live there wasn't a lot of issues, but there were plenty in the surrounding area trying to get here. A few teachers couldn't make it at my kid's school and so they had to split up some classes and have them sit in with different teachers.
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75mph winds are hurricane force, and it was always going to be the worst in the mountains and on the coast. Had gusts up to mid 60's in Half Moon Bay and low 70's in Pacifica, it was pretty close.

So, sorry Marty that it wasn't big in your area.
 
S

simplayer

Member
Curler said:
Seeing flooded regions, downed trees, power outages, yeah I'd say the storm DID quite a bit of damage for a "small storm". I'm not sure what people were expecting? Flash floods did indeed happen, like the warnings called for.
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Yes, it did a fair bit of damage. It seems to be more due to the infrastructure here than the actual severity of the storm though.

Maybe it's just because I'm new here.
 
C

Curler

Unconfirmed Member
Well that was interesting reading the LA rain topic.

Here: "You call THAT a storm?!"

There: "HOLY CRAP WE GOT RAIN!!!"
 
T

Trevelyan

Banned
I'll be honest, I'm in Los Gatos, and I wish the rain was a little worse than it was. I was expecting some torrential downpours, but that never happened. Oh well, still awesome to see the Santa Cruz Mtns get all the rain and shrouded in the clouds - looked pretty ominous.
 
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