GILROY
– A monster storm raged through Gilroy Wednesday, flooding
streets, causing headaches for drivers and leaving some residents
and businesses without power for part of the day. Hail splattered
sporadically during the night, but for the most part, Gilroy fared
well during the powerful winter storm th
at the National Weather Service predicts will be the most severe
this season.
GILROY – A monster storm raged through Gilroy Wednesday, flooding streets, causing headaches for drivers and leaving some residents and businesses without power for part of the day. Hail splattered sporadically during the night, but for the most part, Gilroy fared well during the powerful winter storm that the National Weather Service predicts will be the most severe this season.
Gilroy received drenching rain that measured roughly 2.23 inches between midnight Tuesday and this morning. Hail fell at about 10 p.m. Wednesday, lasting roughly a minute and dropping off and on throughout the night.
Season rainfall for Gilroy now stands at 17.12 inches, or slightly above normal, according to the National Weather Service.
Near mid-day Wednesday, storm drains around town struggled to keep up with the runoff, spreading puddles across streets and around the tires of cars parked near curbs. At several intersections on Church Street, drivers took turns veering around standing water in one lane.
Heavy rains were not the only weather hazard: Powerful winds, some hurricane-force, swept through the area. Gusts in San Jose reached 48 mph while those in the hills reached upwards of 77 mph.
Gilroyans know it’s truly raining when Silva’s Crossing closes. The portion of Miller Avenue near Christmas Hill Park that crosses Uvas Creek closed at 2:30 p.m. after the muddy, swirling waters of the creek inched over the road. City staff had kept an eye on the rain-soaked area all morning, said Carla Ruigh, operations services manager for the city.
This is the second time this winter the city has closed Silva’s Crossing, she said.
Christmas Hill Park was closed Wednesday morning, when the parking lot flooded due to small torrents of runoff from fields east of Santa Teresa Boulevard.
“There’s a huge drainage through the parking lot that has fairly fast-flowing water , and so we closed that just to be on the safe side,” Ruigh said.
Both Miller Avenue and the park were closed through the night, but opened Thursday morning after the water level receded.
Water seeped into the garages of several homes on the outskirts of Gilroy, east of Rucker Elementary School, when Skittle Creek near Foothill Boulevard and Bannister Avenue flooded, said Mike DiMarco, spokesman for the Santa Clara County Water District. Sandbags were brought to stop the overflow.
Some of the other “usual suspects” around Gilroy were closed, DiMarco said, including portions of Watsonville Road and Llagas Road in Morgan Hill. Flooding also caused traffic headaches at Masten Avenue and Monterey Road north of town.
“We escaped pretty well from the storm,” DiMarco said. “The county was really lucky, the reservoirs were only about half full, so they can take a lot of runoff, and the creeks started off fairly low.”
Coyote Reservoir is now 46.3 percent full, Anderson is 50 percent full, Chesbro is at 79.6 percent and Uvas is at 85.9 percent, he said, which still leaves plenty of room.
During the day Wednesday, only 16 Pacific Gas & Electric customers in Gilroy lost power, but in the evening, 3,748 customers were left in the dark during nine different outages, spokesman Jeff Smith said. Residents and businesses near Monterey Street in southeast Gilroy were dark for a couple of hours. Smith said power was restored by 8:45 p.m.
More than 234,000 Pacific Gas & Electric customers in the Bay Area lost power Wednesday, and as of 8:30 this morning 99 percent had power restored, he said.
Ascencion Solorsano Middle School reported a power outage shortly before classes let out for the day, said Jeff Gopp, Gilroy Unified School District’s manager of maintenance operations.
Although Gilroy PG&E customers shouldn’t have to worry about losing power with the worst of the storm over, Smith said, there is still a risk that high gusts of wind could knock down lines with the ground still saturated.
The winds died down late in the day Wednesday, but showers are expected off and on through most of today.
Wednesday afternoon, several Gilroy residents said that while they weren’t exactly enjoying the stormy weather, it wasn’t causing any problems.
“I don’t like to be out in it or drive in it, but it doesn’t bother me,” said Teresa Muñoz, who ducked into a steamy Starbucks on First Street on her way home from work. “It was a drag on my week off of work (last week), because I wanted to work in my garden.”
Lisa Kerstjens also lamented being shut indoors.
“It keeps me from doing the things I like to do, because I love to ride motorcycles, so I’m dying to go out and ride,” she said.
The former Indian employee, now self-employed, said she and her family moved to Gilroy from New York two years ago to be able to ride year-round.
“I hate the rain, but at least it’s better than snow,” Kerstjens said.
Officer Terry Mayes, of the California Highway Patrol, said officers were busy Wednesday, responding to 13 single-vehicle crashes before Thursday morning.
“We’ve had a number of accidents today, probably all of them have been complaints of pain, though,” she said Wednesday.
“To my knowledge, every one of them is the result of hydroplaning and spinning out of control.
“Bottom line, it’s pretty simple: Driving too fast in the rain,” she said. “That guard rail doesn’t give well.”
One crash, at about 1 a.m. Thursday morning, resulted in an injury. Young Kim, of Morgan Hill, hydroplaned while driving north on U.S. 101 near Coyote Creek Drive. His 2003 Kia Sorrento sustained major front-end damage and a passenger in the vehicle sustained a back injury and was transported to Valley Medical Center.
The morning commute for Gilroyans traveling to work in the Bay Area was likely a slow one, as CHP officers there responded to numerous accidents and issued a high wind advisory for all Bay Area bridges.
Gilroy Fire Department said there were no major problems, but residents were filling up sandbags at the Chestnut station.
According to the National Weather Service, Wednesday morning brought the brunt of the storm that was part of a larger system that formed over the Pacific Ocean.
“The past three days we’ve been seeing essentially all one big storm,” said Steve Anderson, a weather service forecaster. “The worst heavy rain and high winds have now passed us, and they’re slamming into Southern California.”
High ocean swells of 20 to 30 feet, some as large at 50 feet, are expected to continue today.
