Those warnings about breakers of up to 40 feet turned out to be real as a major swell crashed into the nearby coastline on Sunday, with record waves in Monterey Bay of over 34 feet. As the Chronicle reports, a previous record of 32.8 feet in 2008 for Monterey was broken, and up and down the coast the waves were bigger and rolling in fast than has been seen in many years. Violent waves claimed the lives of three people on Sunday, two of whom were Chinese nationals who had been on some rocks along 17 Mile Drive in Pebble Beach around 2 a.m. As CBS 5 explains, the Coast Guard performed a rescue after learning that one person had fallen off the rocks and two others went in to save them. One man was pulled out alive but the other two were not found. Later Sunday morning, a paraglider died and was pulled from the surf in Pacifica.
A high surf advisory is in effect through 3 a.m. Tuesday with breakers of 25 to 30 feet possible.
There was a brief hailstorm in San Francisco around 3 a.m. this morning, as KRON 4 and multiple people on Twitter reported. This followed on another rare hail pelting that happened amid thundershowers on Friday morning.
@NWSBayArea hail at 24th and York in mission iced over street pic.twitter.com/74UxLiVjCz
— tnashw (@tnashw) January 23, 2017
Up along the Russian River they saw upwards of 4.5 new inches of rain in some places, and the Santa Rosa Press Democrat said that as of 3 p.m. Sunday there were ten roads closed around Sonoma County due to mudslides or fallen trees. Guerneville, which got some of its worst flooding in a decade last week, got another 2.3 inches of rain.
As 20-year resident Mitzi Forbes told the Press Democrat, "It’s the flip side of living on the beautiful Russian River. Three hundred and sixty days a year are perfect, and you have five days with no power and flooding."
A fourth life was lost in the storm up in Mendocino County where a large oak tree toppled onto an apartment building in Ukiah. The Chronicle reports that one woman was crushed while lying in her bed. CBS 5 has photos of the tree and its damage to the building.
An 18-year-old Tracy woman is also feared dead following a small collision in Niles Canyon Sunday morning. Her car veered into a rain-swollen Alameda Creek following the collision, and as CBS 5 reports, she remains missing.
Another big tree, a eucalyptus next to the parking lot of La Finestra Ristorante in Lafayette, came crashing down on top of 10 cars during one woman's 70th birthday party there. Several of the cars were severely damaged, but no one was injured, per CBS 5.
Rainfall totals were more modest in this last storm, and KRON 4 gives SF's total as 1.32 inches as of this morning. The highest unofficial total from the National Weather Service was recorded at Three Peaks in Monterey County, which got 6.62 inches.
Highway 37 was closed due to flooding on Sunday, as it has been multiple times in recent weeks, and as the Chronicle reports a flood warning was in effect for low lying areas near streams and creeks in Sonoma County through Monday morning.
