In the Santa Cruz Mountains, the totals increased easily greater than 2 inches with many areas that had 3 inches of rainfall or more. National Weather Service meteorologist Rick Canepa pointed out that wind speeds greater than 58 mph are officially considered damaging by the weather service, and that the more powerful gusts in the Santa Cruz Mountains surpassed that threshold Tuesday. A tree crashed onto this West Zayante Road property on Tuesday during the storm. The highway is also closed at lower Glen Arbor Road to about 8 miles north of Santa Cruz at Arboleda Way due to slides, according to Caltrans.

The Santa Cruz Mountains were hit the hardest by the storm and at press time Wednesday, portions of Highway 9 remained closed from Scenic Drive to Woodland Drive in Ben Lomond, and from Bear Creek Road in Boulder Creek to the junction of Highway 236 near Watermans Gap, both due to downed trees. “While we try to respond to every outage as quickly as possible to assess the damage, blocked roads or flooding may hinder our restoration efforts.” “PG&E crews are encountering major damage in Santa Cruz County related to this storm, which is not only resulting in fallen trees impacting our equipment, but also blocking roads and creating access issues,” said PG&E spokesperson Mayra Tostado. In the mountainous areas of Santa Cruz County, crews are contending with trees across roadways that need to be cleared for access, he said. Spillman said that there are approximately 277 crews working to restore power system-wide, with 52 crews in the South Bay and Central Coast. A massive fir tree on Tuesday sheared off a bedroom of Don Saputo and Dani Piserchio’s house off of Bear Creek Road in Boulder Creek. SANTA CRUZ - With powerful wind gusts reaching speeds up to 80 mph in the mountains Tuesday, and soil saturated from weeks of seemingly perpetual rainfall, trees fell all over Santa Cruz County - on powerlines, vehicles, houses and highways leading to a flurry of car accidents, road closures and power outages.Īccording to PG&E communications representative Benjamin Spillman, as of Wednesday afternoon there were about 16,000 customers without power in Santa Cruz County, across 152 outages, with about 14,015 customers power having been restored since Tuesday when there were nearly 30,000 outages in the county.

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