Third storm in five days wreaks havoc on U.S. West Coast

(Before It's News)

December 3, 2012 – CALIFORNIA - Blasting out of the Pacific, the third and most powerful “Pineapple Express” storm of the week swept over the Bay Area Sunday morning, dumping heavy rain on a region already soaked to the roots and reeling from power outages and flooding. “It’s a mess,” said CHP Officer James Evans. “We’ve got flooding everywhere.” The triple whammy toppled trees and power lines, snarled traffic, caused accidents on slippery roadways and cut electrical power to about 297,000 customers in the region, including BART riders who were stranded on subway cars during a harrowing, one-hour outage early Sunday morning. Measured by rainfall and wind, this was one of the most powerful storm events since October 2009, said Jan Null, a meteorologist with the Golden Gate Weather Services. Pineapple Express is a term for warm weather fronts that start in the southwest Pacific and head toward California. This one started north of Hawaii, Null said. “It was a pretty significant series of storms,” he said. The storms actually swept through over a five-day period from Wednesday to Sunday, allowing some time for drowning areas to drain out. “If we had no breaks, it could have been worse.” After the first two storms saturated Bay Area flatlands and hillsides late last week, the National Weather Service issued flash-flood warnings over the weekend for Santa Cruz and Santa Clara counties, including Ben Lomond and Boulder Creek, after as much as one inch of rain per hour fell in the area. And some of those predictions came true: On Sunday morning, authorities in Santa Cruz reported trees into power lines at several spots throughout the county. There were also two rock slides on Highway 17 — the narrow, winding connecting road between San Jose and Santa Cruz. The first slide was near Sugar Loaf Road and the second was reported at Glenwood Cutoff. Both required work but no major problems resulted. Although the Santa Cruz Mountains saw the heaviest rainfall, no part of the Bay Area was spared from the storms and the treacherous driving conditions they created. –Mercury News

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