SANTA CRUZ — This winter’s first major storm arrived with a punch but not a knockout in Santa Cruz County.
Related Articles
For Bay Area, another lighter blast of rain expected before the sun returns
Chart: Rainfall totals from the Bay Area’s October storm
Photos: Season’s first big rainstorm drenches the Bay Area
Flood advisories issued as storm moves through Bay Area
Bay Area rain: Biggest storm in seven months is here. How long will it last?
A deep, low-pressure storm system moving from the Pacific Northwest to California’s Central Coast arrived Monday and, along with it, periods of heavy downpours and turbulent seas that parked a loose sailing vessel on the beach in Santa Cruz overnight and sent a possible localized tornado to an organic farm along the North Coast.
RELATED: For Bay Area, another lighter blast of rain expected before the sun returns
While weather experts had been tracking the storm for days, National Weather Service meteorologist Dylan Flynn told the Sentinel Tuesday that officials were surprised by just how concentrated the dose of rough weather ended up being.
“It was maybe a little bit more condensed in time than we had initially anticipated,” said Flynn.
Sentinel weather observers reported 2.72 inches of rainfall in Ben Lomond Monday through Tuesday, 2.20 inches in Scotts Valley and 2 inches in Soquel. Flynn said the city of Santa Cruz received as much as 1.5 inches Monday through Tuesday morning.
The weather service issued a flood advisory at 4:21 p.m. Monday that included the county’s North Coast and was followed up by another one at 4:53 p.m. that included the county in its entirety. Those advisories were set to expire three hours later, but the downpour was strong enough to warrant an extension through 9:15 p.m. and 10 p.m. Monday, respectively.
The strong storm conditions also made for choppy waters along the coast. Around the same time that the flood advisories were issued, strong tides and heavy wave action snapped the anchor off of a 22-foot sailboat docked along the east side of the Santa Cruz Wharf, according to Santa Cruz Fire Department spokesperson Katie Lee.
No one was on board as the incident unfolded and there were no injuries reported, but the boat was eventually washed up on the shore at Main Beach and remained there through Tuesday until the tide rose high enough for it to be towed away, Lee said.
The owner of the sea vessel was notified and crews with the U.S. Coast Guard, Santa Cruz Harbor Patrol and the county Sheriff’s Office assisted with the response.
‘Calling it a tornado because it felt like one’
Flynn said the unstable conditions off the coast late Monday also prompted warnings about the potential for waterspouts, a column of rotating air similar to tornados but occurring over water. While some storm cells with rotation got close to land, as of print deadline Tuesday, the weather service did not confirm any tornado landings during the storm.
But Taylor Lane, co-owner of Flip Flop Farms in Pescadero believes otherwise. Lane told the Sentinel that he was outside Monday preparing the land for inclement weather when the wind ramped up dramatically and flipped a portable toilet next to him. He made a dash for his office nearby but had trouble closing the door as the wind grew even stronger.
“The whole place was just shaking,” said Lane.
Once the system had passed, he ventured outside to find some crops torn out of the ground, a 200-pound water tank tossed about a quarter-mile down the property and a hoop house — or greenhouse with a light metal frame — had been obliterated.
“It was basically folded inward,” said Lane. “All of the metal poles just bent like toothpicks.”
He said his hoop houses easily withstood a windstorm in 2023 with speeds that exceeded 60 mph, so by his estimation, Monday’s incident clocked in at 100 mph gusts at least.
He said staff from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration visited his property Tuesday to collect data and take photos, but they were not ready to definitively categorize the incident.
“I’m calling it a tornado,” said Lane, “because it felt like one.”
La Niña
Tuesday’s storm may have also signaled the start of a cyclical weather pattern known as La Niña. The weather service placed California within a La Niña advisory beginning in October and extending through the first half of winter, Flynn said. The natural weather pattern, last seen in 2023, typically brings less precipitation through the winter months to Southern California and above average rain to the Pacific Northwest.
RELATED: La Niña is here: Is California heading for a dry winter?
“The Bay Area is kind of in between those two signals,” said Flynn. “It can really go either way. Everybody is looking for the signal, but I’ve got to be honest, the science really isn’t there for the Bay Area to predict beyond the typical two-week timeframe on how wet the winter is going to be.”
Santa Cruz County spokesperson Jason Hoppin said Tuesday that aside from some minor localized flooding, a few downed branches and some drainage issues, county roads and infrastructure emerged from the storm relatively unscathed.
Hoppin wrote that the “ground will absorb water until later in the season, so we don’t come close to real flooding issues for a while.”
Caltrans announced that the spate of rough weather was strong enough to delay a planned closure of the southbound Park Avenue Highway 1 off-ramp. The closure was originally set for Tuesday, but has been rescheduled to happen from 7 a.m. to 3:30 p.m. Thursday and Friday.
The closure is necessary for crews to pour concrete for a new soundwall near the ramp and portable message boards will be in place to alert travelers and direct them to the next exit.
According to a forecast from the weather service, gloomy conditions with continued rain showers were expected to persist in Santa Cruz through Tuesday before the reemergence of sun on Wednesday. That bright, warm pattern should last through the remainder of the week.
RAINFALL TOTALS
Ben Lomond: 2.7 inches.
Scotts Valley: 2.2 inches.
Soquel: 2 inches.
Santa Cruz: 1.5 inches.
*Monday through print deadline Tuesday. Santa Cruz is from Monday to Tuesday morning.