This is one of the strongest storm to hit my yard yet. Lights are out when I got to the office 25 miles away. Even our backup facility lost their power after 4 hours of operation. Being battered right now, trees falling left and right here in the office.

I think there goes my beautiful crop of yosemite and shasta gold mandarins! Will assess damage as soon as I get home later today.

Strong Winds Down Trees, Overturn Small Plane
Blizzard Advisory Issued For High Country
POSTED: 2:46 am PST January 4, 2008
UPDATED: 11:36 am PST January 4, 2008

SACRAMENTO, Calif. -- A fierce wave of wind, rain and snow slammed into the Central Valley and Sierra early Friday, toppling trees, downing power lines and even overturning a small plane in Sacramento.

The storm is the second in a much-anticipated series of systems forecast to pass through the area in the coming days.

At 10:30 a.m., a steady, heavy snow was falling on Interstate 80 at Donner Summit. The road remained open, but conditions were expected to worsen.

A wind gust of 66 mph was reported at Sacramento International Airport. Ten Southwest flights and two United flights were canceled, spokeswoman Karen Doron said.

As of 10:45 a.m., Interstate 5 was closed near Sacramento International because of big-rig wrecks and high winds.

About 105,000 Sacramento Municipal Utility District customers were without power, spokesman Robert Tokunaga said.

Winds caused a tree to topple into a house on Center Street in Roseville. Also, a huge eucalyptus tree was blown down on Sun Tree Lane in Fair Oaks, clipping a house in the process. A tree fell on a car and garage on Inman Avenue in Stockton.

"If you don't have to go out this weekend, it might be a nice weekend to stay at home after the holidays," said Frank McCarton, chief deputy director of the state Office of Emergency Services.

The U.S. Forest Service issued an avalanche warning for Mount Shasta, in the Cascade Range in far Northern California, while the National Weather Service issued a rare blizzard advisory for the Sierra.

KCRA 3 WeatherPlus meteorologist Dirk Verdoorn said 2 to 3 inches of rain were coming to the Sacramento area over the course of the day, with up to 4 feet of snow expected at the high passes of the mountains.

The Sierra will see wind gusts of 70 to 80 mph over the high passes such as Donner Summit on Interstate 80 and Echo Summit on Highway 50.

Verdoorn said Sacramento will see the heaviest rain through about 10 a.m. Localized street flooding is expected.

By noon, rain and wind will taper off somewhat, with winds dropping to 20 to 30 mph.

Rain will continue through the night in the valley. Early Saturday will offer a slight break, but another wave of precipitation will move into the area late in the evening.

Wind gusts forced some Tahoe-area ski resorts to shut down some or all of their ski lifts on Thursday.

"We'll operate as much of the resort as we're able to," said Russ Pecoraro, spokesman for Heavenly Mountain Resort in South Lake Tahoe.

In other weather-related news:

# Strong winds are blamed for flipping over a small plane that was parked at Executive Airport in south Sacramento.

# Light Rail in Sacramento was experiencing delays of up to an hour.

# A spokeswoman for Pacific Gas and Electric said more than 40,000 customers from Sonoma County south to Salinas have no electricity. One of the biggest outages is taking place on the Peninsula, where an estimated 9,000 customers are without power. Another 7,200 homes and business in Sonoma County have no electricity. Outages in the East Bay have knocked out power to about 7,100 customers, while in Marin County there's an outage affecting 6,500 homes and businesses. Separate outages have also hit San Francisco, San Jose, Santa Cruz and Salinas.

#A fallen tree blocked eastbound lanes of Madison Avenue just west of Sunrise Boulevard shortly before 6 a.m.

#Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger announced that officials will activate state emergency operations centers today in Sacramento and Los Alamitos.

#In Truckee, the American Red Cross planned to open a shelter today for motorists stranded by the snow.

#The Capitol Corridor motorcoach service to the Sierra has been suspended due to blizzard conditions, the Capitol Corridor Joint Powers Authority said Thursday. Service between Placerville and South Lake Tahoe, as well as all service between Colfax, Soda Springs, Truckee, Reno and Sparks, is canceled.

#Ocean tides were expected to swell to 30 feet, prompting the U.S. Coast Guard to caution boaters to remain in port.

Flash flood warning in:
Salinas, Seaside, castroville, Santa Cruz,Monterey County
first time that I know of since 1984.
We are now undergoing heavy rain and strong wind. And prediction of 30-foot waves.

Best of Luck to you guys out there--Stay safe and dry!

It hasn't hit us yet, but it seems like we will get the usual tail end of the storm. After the fires, the last thing we need is excessive rainfall on our burned out hillsides. Fortunately it appears that we won't get as much as originally was predicted. Good luck Joe. Any broken branches, feel free to ship as budwood .

Phillip

About 0530 Friday morning I awoke to the sound of my suncreen bouncing on the deck. Stupid me, I braced it instead of breaking it down. I had told myself earlier this fall, that in advance of such a storm I would remove the canopy. Should of done that Thursday evening when I returned home from a business meeting in Woodland (Joe's neck-of-the-woods).

Right about 0700 a very strong gust of wind struck, lifting the canopy and frame from above my trees and depositing it on the rear lawn. The trees appear to be unscathed. The canopy can be uprighted and reassembled; however, as it flew off the deck it took my Webber BBQ with it, snapping off the lid and shearing a tree rose at its base! But at least my citrus seem to be fine. Bananas are in the garage, awaiting spring.

At the same time the above happened, the power went out in my neighborhood. It wasn't restored until 14.5 hours later. So far we have 4.5" of rain with more coming. Even had some pea size hail this morning. Nothing like what Millet has to contend with, but unusual for coastal California.

Kent

Many citrus fruits strewn all over the place.
At least I've just got to pick the calamondins instead of climbing the ladder!
Grapefruits, kumquats, calamondins, sweet and acidless oranges, navels, valencias, pummelos, satsumas, ponkans are all strewn over. I've got aout 50% of them left on the trees. My bananas were all leaning over!

So far my potted containers declared freedom from the potted plants. It was garbage day too and I have to hunt the entire block for our garbage bin. My disposed Christmas Tree came back to our lawn, near the door, it hasn't given up yet and wanted to overstay inside, it seems. Many limbs of citruses broke, but amazingly, none of the new grafts!

A good deal of leaves were stripped away from my citruses. But they'll recover.

The storm somehow were easy in my city of Salinas. But the adjoining city like Carmel, Seaside and Monterey got the brunt of the storm, falling trees and flooding. All of my citrus and bananas were safe except the ground were soaked from the rain. This morning were sunshine and no wind at all. But Sunday through Wednesday still more rain to come.

As soon as my friends knew that I have loads of calamondin fruits by the base of the tree, the fruits were gone before I got home! At least they didn't go to waste. Also gone were fruits of lemons. Lemons are really pricey this year. They left the oranges untouched and I got to enjoy them, a little bit on the tart side, so that's why. The oranges should taste good around mid-Feb well into summer.

Still surveying the damage.

The California storm has moved into Colorado. We were the lucky recipients of up to 4 feet of snow. Sorry to California for any damage, but snow is heaven to us here in Colorado. - Millet

The winter's snow in the Colorado Mountains is a very important source of water to Colorado, Utah, Arizona, Nevada, New Mexico, Texas, Arkansas, Oklaoma, Nebraska and California. Presently, the snow pack is 149 percent of a 30 year average.

Millet
Colum Cille (521 - 597) Island of Iona

Sorry about all the bad weather for California but could you box up some of that extra water and send it to us in Colorado, we never get enough water (average rainfall in Denver is 14" a year) If it was snow you would have about 20', sounds like Buffalo, NY.

Even today, there are still 1,000 Davis residents without power. It could take a few more days for PG&E to restore power completely.