Multiple sources told the Bay Area News Group that Price and her new leadership team in their first full week in office moved to place at least three deputy district attorneys, including senior prosecutors, on leave.

Deputy District Attorneys John Brouhard, Butch Ford and Colleen McMahon are among the attorneys Price placed on paid administrative leave — a status that opens the door for their termination.

Additionally, Chief of Inspectors Craig Chew and Assistant Chief of Inspectors Andrea Moreland were fired, according to multiple sources. Unlike prosecutors, inspectors are considered at-will employees and can be terminated without arbitration. The attorneys placed on leave could not be fired until after a two-pronged process, which ends with a ruling by either an administrative law judge or an arbitrator.

On Friday, the mood inside the DA’s office ranged from demoralization to panic. Multiple employees were asked to inform their colleagues, and in some cases their friends, that they were to be placed on administrative leave and other attorneys sat in their offices wondering if they would be next, according to the sources.

Matt Finnegan, an attorney with the local union representing Alameda County prosecutors, said his office is representing the attorneys and will continue to do so “as more slips come in.”

“The biggest downside is that they aren’t going to be able to handle any cases while they’re on administrative leave,” Finnegan said.

It is unclear exactly why the prosecutors were shown the door. A spokeswoman for the DA’s office declined to comment.

However, Price had criticized some of the prosecutors, including Ford, during her 2022 campaign.

Ford, a longtime prosecutor with more than 30 murder trials under his belt, prosecuted an Oakland man, Shawn Martin, who won an appeal of his murder conviction over Ford giving jurors a misleading instruction. Martin was found not guilty on retrial, and later became a volunteer for Price’s campaign.

Martin’s case became a sticking point because just before his second trial, his attorney filed a failed motion to recuse the entire Alameda County DA’s office for alleged rampant misconduct. Just days before Price’s victory in the Nov. 8 election, Martin was identified as a suspect in a nonfatal shooting outside an Oakland bar and remains at large.

The shakeup also comes just days after Price reduced charges against suspected serial killer David Misch, who was being prosecuted by McMahon. Already incarcerated at a state prison hospital for stabbing a woman to death, Misch is facing a new trial in the slayings of two Fremont women and the abduction and killing of 9-year-old Michaela Garecht in Hayward, all cold cases from the 1980s.

Price dropped special circumstances charges against Misch, stirring controversy while making good on a campaign promise to review cases where individuals face life without the possibility of parole. It is the first of many such cases Price is expected to evaluate.

The official reason for sidelining Brouhard along with McMahon would be more of a mystery, if not for a common denominator among the two veteran prosecutors. While running for DA, Price held a press conference calling out McMahon, Brouhard and other prosecutors for using their government email accounts to campaign for Nancy O’Malley in 2018. O’Malley — who defeated Price and won re-election that year — announced her retirement in May 2021, opening up the seat for the first time in decades.

Price at the time said the prosecutors used county resources “to gain an unfair advantage” against her. Price and an attorney representing her campaign filed a complaint with the Fair Political Practices Commission alleging attorneys violated a state government code prohibiting an independent expenditure committee from coordinating with a candidate — in this case O’Malley.

The Fair Political Practices Commission investigation of the complaint filed by Price remains open, according to the FPPC. Like Ford, McMahon and Brouhard have handled numerous felony trials and are among the office’s most seasoned prosecutors.

Other high-ranking prosecutors who worked under O’Malley have left or are rumored to be eyeing the exit.

Veteran prosecutor Terry Wiley, the O’Malley-backed candidate who ran against Price in the November 2022 election, retired from the office after the election.

One early departure, according to sources, is Assistant District Attorney L.D. Louis, a 20-plus-year prosecutor. Louis is said to have joined the County Counsel’s Office, which oversees legal matters for the civilian side of the county. Louis was most recently the head of the DA’s mental health unit, specializing in policy as well as collaborative courts and alternatives to incarceration.

Top-floor prosecutors and inspectors, like Wiley and Chew, are at-will employees, meaning they could be dismissed without a reason. Virtually all prosecutors, except for assistant district attorneys, are represented by the Alameda County Prosecutors Association and cannot be terminated without cause. Prosecutors began organizing in 2018 and were formalized as a union two years later.

Any prosecutor placed on leave is entitled to a so-called Skelly hearing, which provides employees an opportunity to hear and defend themselves against the employer’s allegations.

In announcing her new leadership team last Friday, Price appointed retired Oakland police Capt. Eric Lewis as chief of inspectors and former Marin County Assistant District Attorney Otis Bruce Jr. and Royl L. Roberts, a Peralta Community College administrator who recently became the district’s general counsel after passing the state bar in July, as her two chief assistant district attorneys.

John Muir Health, a multibillion-dollar community health system in Contra Costa County, announced Thursday that it has entered into a definitive agreement with the San Ramon medical center’s owner, Tenent Healthcare, to acquire sole ownership, pending a review by the Federal Trade Commission.

“We believe that this acquisition is good for our community, caregivers, patients, and John Muir Health and San Ramon Regional Medical Center,” said Mike Thomas, president and CEO of John Muir Health.

The healthcare organization — serving patients in Contra Costa, eastern Alameda, and southern Solano counties — already operates two of the largest medical centers in Contra Costa County: John Muir Health Walnut Creek Medical Center and John Muir Health Concord Medical Center.

The Walnut Creek location serves as Contra Costa County’s only designated trauma center.

In 2013, John Muir Health invested nearly $100 million to acquire a 49% interest of San Ramon Regional Medical Center in San Ramon to expand its services throughout the Tri-Valley.

The new agreement allows John Muir Health to acquire the remaining ownership for $142.5 million.

San Ramon Regional Medical Center first opened its doors in 1990 and is a 123-bed acute care hospital that provides comprehensive inpatient, outpatient, and emergency care.

Current patients of both San Ramon Regional and John Muir Health should not expect their current medical care to be affected by the purchase, hospital spokesperson Ben Drew told this news organization.

“It will really be a fairly seamless integration, and there would be no need for anybody to change their doctors,” Drew said. “The transition will give more access to services in the Tri-Valley and then up through our hospitals in Walnut Creek and Concord.”

If all goes well, some immediate improvements John Muir intends to implement include investing in facilities and enhanced services to the medical center, extending non-profit community benefits programs to the San Ramon area, and cutting down on duplicative administrative expenses, according to its press release.

“We view this as a long-term opportunity to expand our services and better serve the growing populations in the San Ramon Valley and Tri-Valley. By allocating fixed costs over a broader scope of operations, we will also improve cost-effectiveness for patients and health plans,” Thomas said.

The eighth and ninth storms to target California since Christmas are on the way this holiday weekend, making for volatile and treacherous conditions from the Bay Area to the Sierra.

The storms themselves won’t be as intense as those that devastated communities in the Santa Cruz mountains and along the beaches over the past week, but with rivers running high and soils already saturated, more flooding and mudslides are predicted across California. The Salinas River in southern Monterey County in particular is expected to flood Friday.

“We definitely appreciate the bounty, but we wish it was spread out over a longer period,” Jeff Lorber, meteorologist with the National Weather Service, said Wednesday.

So much snow has fallen already this season that sensors are registering what is considered the “full seasonal snowpack” normally expected by April 1, state climatologist Michael Anderson told reporters during a news briefing Wednesday. It’s still too soon to say whether the snowpack levels will hold until then, but if they do, they could provide ample snowmelt to continue to fill the reservoirs this spring and summer.

Kevin “Coop” Cooper, a longtime Tahoe area ski condition reporter and resort marketing consultant, said the abundant snow is a welcome change after several lean snow years during the state’s drought.

“Right now, I’m looking out of my house and it’s snowing lightly. We’re seeing a nice new amount of snow, temperatures are dropping,” he said Wednesday. “After my 30 years up here, this is one of the best MLK weekends we’ve seen in a long time.”

But that comes with a catch.

Video: California storms drop hail in the Bay Area, cause rockslides, sinkholes and more

With heavy snow and high winds predicted in the Sierra through the weekend, getting to the mountains could be dangerous. Travel in vulnerable areas, especially the Sierra, is not advised from Friday afternoon through Saturday, Lorber said, “when the winds and the rainfall will be at their peak.” The ninth storm is expected to roar in late Sunday through Tuesday.

It’s the kind of warning that weekend warriors amped to hit the Sierra slopes don’t like to heed.

“Fresh snow is like going through butter,” said Andrew Pham, 22, who stopped at Helm of Sun Valley ski shop in San Jose to attach bindings to his new snowboard and is planning to drive up Friday. “When you’re the first one on it, ooh.”

By Wednesday, snowpack levels reached 226% of average for this time of year, beating out 2005 which was 206% of average. All that fresh snow is giving experts reason to feel optimistic that drought conditions that have gripped the Golden State for three years could meaningfully ease by the end of the snowy season.

“The fact that we’re continuing to get this precipitation is just absolutely fantastic,” said Andrew Schwartz, lead scientist at the UC Berkeley Central Sierra Snow Laboratory near Donner Summit. “It’s still unlikely that we’re going to get completely out of this drought in a single year. But if the storm door stays open… we can put a serious dent in it.”

As of Wednesday, major Northern California reservoirs have registered “impressive gains,” Anderson, the state climatologist, said. But there’s still plenty of catching up to do. Lake Don Pedro east of Modesto is at 69% capacity, for instance, and San Luis Reservoir southeast of the Bay Area, which has risen 35 feet since Dec. 1, is 40% full. The Shasta and Oroville reservoirs, the behemoths of California’s water system, are at 42% and 47% respectively. Lake Oroville has risen more than 90 feet since Dec. 1, surpassing its 2021 and 2022 levels.

“We’ve had quite a deficit because of the drought,” said Molly White, principal engineer with the state water board. “So we’re seeing steep inclines right now in storage, and hope that continues.”

In the Bay Area, Mount Umunhum in Santa Cruz County registered the highest rainfall total in the 24 hours leading to 10 a.m. Wednesday — 1.03 inches. Concord recorded 0.97 inches of rain. About six-tenths of an inch fell in Los Gatos; a quarter-inch fell at Ben Lomond, and two-tenths of an inch fell in San Jose and at the San Francisco International Airport.

In Tahoe, business is booming at ski resorts, despite struggles to keep lifts operational as a series of snow storms continues to plow through the Sierras. So much snow has accumulated in the Sierras already that ski resorts are having to keep track of avalanche risk hour-by-hour.

Mark McLaughlin, the so-called “storm king” who keeps track of Sierra conditions, said he listened to the concussive pounding Wednesday morning of cannons pelting the mountain sides of the Palisades Tahoe resort to trigger avalanches to improve safety before skiers arrive.

“I bet you I heard 20 of them this morning, 20 blasts,” McLaughlin said Wednesday.

John O’Connell, spokesman for Caltrans in the Lake Tahoe area, recommended that skiers from the Bay Area hit the road Thursday if they can, as the storm may arrive earlier Friday than initially expected. They should be prepared to put chains on their car tires unless they have four-wheel or all-wheel drive vehicles with tires designed for rain and snow. Either way, if there are chain controls due to ice and snow, vehicles should drive no faster than 30 mph, he said. And temporary road closures are possible during the snowstorms.

“We recommend people bring blankets, bottled water and snacks, have their phone charged up and a full tank of gas,” O’Connell said. “If we do have to hold traffic, you might be stuck up there in traffic that’s not moving for a little bit. We just want people to be prepared.”

Pham, who was tuning up his snowboard in San Jose on Wednesday, is still hoping to hit that fresh snow.

“But Dad called and said the storm is coming and I shouldn’t go,” he said. “So I guess I’m 50/50. But it would probably be worth it.”

Staff writer Scooty Nickerson contributed to this story.

The new law is intended to ensure that seniors and other adults — in particular those who rely on cannabis for medicinal reasons — have access marijuana vaping products. Proposed by Supervisor Diane Burgis, the ordinance allows permitted cannabis retailers located in unincorporated areas to sell and deliver the products.

The ordinance passed 3-2 with supervisors Federal Glover and Candace Anderson voting no.

During the first reading of the ordinance on Dec. 6, Burgis said the motivation behind the revised ordinance was that the 2019 law hurt seniors and other adults who rely on cannabis vaping products for both recreational and medical reasons. In particular, it affected homebound seniors in unincorporated areas, she said.

“What we’re trying to do by having policies here in Contra Costa County is to give people a way to access safe products,” Burgis said.

At the December meeting, both Glover and Anderson voted against the ordinance, saying it would send mixed messages to the public and betray an effort led by Contra Costa youth who wanted the ban in the first place.

“We clearly took a leadership position back in 2019 when we had a number of our students throughout this county that came before us and asked for the leadership to put this ban in place,” Glover said. “And I’m not going to turn away from that. I think it’s important that that we listen to our youth when they cry out and ask for this help.”

Glover said there is no evidence “that vaping does not cause problems to individuals” and partially lifting the ban would send “false messages or confusing messages to our public that it’s OK to do this this while at the same time saying that we want to prevent it.”

On Tuesday, groups advocating for cannabis access told the Board of Supervisors that banning pot vape products has created an illicit black market for the product and disproportionately affected vulnerable populations who rely on cannabis primarily for medical reasons.

Renee Lee, a resident of the retirement community of Rossmoor who runs an organization with a mission to help seniors legally access and safety use cannabis, said the majority of medicinal cannabis users in the unincorporated community near Walnut Creek prefer vaping.

“I am so happy,” Lee said after Tuesday’s vote. “It’s like a big weight off my shoulders … (the ordinance) had been very unfair.”

Sarah Armstrong of American for Safe Access, the country’s largest and oldest advocacy organization for medical cannabis patients, said forcing people to travel medicinal marijuana “often stimulates a black market because they simply cannot go to the nearest dispensary if they don’t have one near them.”

Before the vote, Burgis emphasized that the ordinance makes no change to the current ban of tobacco and flavored tobacco vaping products; nor does it allow for new dispensaries in unincorporated areas.

“This does allow the sale of one particular set of cannabis products, which are already sold in many cities of Contra Costa County and are available to purchase in nearly every other part of the state that has approved cannabis retail sales,” she said.

In passing the ordinance, the board also directed Contra Costa Health Services to begin working on an awareness program about the dangers of youth cannabis vaping. Supervisor John Gioia said creation of such a program was a major factor in his decision to support the new legislation.

State and local officials on Tuesday began cleaning up from the half-dozen atmospheric rivers that have pummeled California since late December, killing at least 17 people and leaving 96,000 people under evacuation warnings or orders amid the risk of flooding and mudslides. Their work came amid a brief respite from the rain and the wind but with more strong storms expected to arrive later in the week.

Although none of the coming storms are forecast to be as big as the “bomb cyclone” that hit last week, residents have been warned to stay vigilant. While touring the storm and tide-ravaged community of Capitola on Wednesday, Gov. Gavin Newsom cautioned that even a little rain could cause outsized effects due to heavily-saturated soils.

“The magnitude of this is not isolated to smaller communities, it is scaled across the largest state in our union,” Newsom said. “We’re soaked. This place is soaked. And now just more modest amount of precipitation could have as equal or greater impact in terms of the conditions on the ground.”

On Tuesday, nearly every corner of the state had felt the impacts of the recent atmospheric onslaught that caused flooding and myriad downed trees in Northern California, mudslides and a major evacuation in the Southern California community of Montecito and heavy snow across the length of the Sierra Nevada.

California Storms video: Hail in the Bay Area, rockslides, sinkholes and more

On the Central Coast, where some of the storm’s worst effects were felt, a 5-year-old boy died Monday after being swept away in a San Luis Obispo County creek, authorities said. A woman also drowned the same day after driving onto a mile-long section of Central Coast roadway that had been closed due to flooding, according to the California Highway Patrol.

Visiting the Santa Cruz coast, Newsom vowed to provide assistance to Capitola, where huge waves stoked from a “bomb cyclone” last week tore out a section of the historic Capitola Wharf and smashed and flooded a half-dozen beachfront Capitola Village restaurants.

“We’re not walking away,” Newsom said, standing on the town’s waterfront where generations of Bay Area residents have gone to frolic on the sand, dine and drink on seaside patios. From Dec. 31 through Sunday, heavy rains and a devastating tidal event caused at least $28 million in damages to public property across unincorporated Santa Cruz County, said Jason Hoppin, spokesman for Santa Cruz County. In addition, five buildings were red-tagged, and another 131 were deemed significantly damaged but repairable.

That doesn’t include any damage sustained Monday when the San Lorenzo River flooded its banks and sent water rushing into numerous buildings. Nor does it include a line of gusty storms to tear through the county early Tuesday morning, which prompted dozens of 911 calls from people reporting trees falling onto their houses..

Newsom gave no specifics regarding state aid to businesses Wednesday, nor details about funding for rebuilding the wharf. He also did not reveal whether the Seacliff Wharf — a state facility just down the coast that once led to a now-damaged cement-filled ship — would be repaired after damage from the storm. “All that will be determined,” Newsom said.

Around the Bay Area, the true extent of the recent storms began coming into focus Tuesday, even as thunderstorms dropped pea-sized hail and yet more rain.

In Santa Clara County, at least $24 million in damages to public property had been tallied by city and county officials through midday Tuesday — a figure that was expected to evolve as more assessments were completed, a county official said. Much of that tally included damage to roadways — more than a dozen of which remained closed midday Tuesday.

The heavy rains also caused dozens of sewage spills around the Bay Area and other parts of the state as sewage systems became overwhelmed by huge amounts of water pouring into the ground and seeping into pipes. Since New Year’s Eve, for example, at least 22 million gallons of “unauthorized discharges” occurred in the Bay Area, said Eileen White, executive officer for the San Francisco Bay Water Quality Control Board.

About 150 calls a day have streamed into the dispatch center for Bay Area Tree Specialists of late, said Michelle Reulman, the business’ office manager.

“This is a state of emergency,” said John Gill, owner of Majestic Tree Service, just moments after helping to clear a tree that fell on three vehicles and a house Wednesday off Bascom Avenue in San Jose. “You drive every five minutes, and there’s a tree down on a house or the street or the road or it’s flooded.”

In the early morning hours of Tuesday, a falling eucalyptus tree topped a 137-foot tall transmission tower in San Jose’s Willow Glen neighborhood. The weight of the tower brought down three distribution poles as well as power lines and some transformers, Pacific Gas & Electric Co. spokesperson Mayra Tostado said in an update posted to Twitter. As a result, about 2,100 customers lost power.

“We’ve brought in additional resources to be able to restore power as quickly as possible to our customers,” Tostado said. “We understand how disruptive it has been to be without power and we’re doing everything we can to turn the lights back on as quickly as possible.”

Tostado said the region saw winds up to 70 mph and 100 cloud-to-ground lightning strikes.

The South Bay took a big punch from Mother Nature today. @PGE4Me responded to an outage in San Jose’s Willow Glen due to a eucalyptus tree knocking down a 137-ft. tall transmission tower. With its weight, it pulled down power lines and poles connected to it. Here’s my report. pic.twitter.com/HJUJm9tqDA

— Mayra Tostado (@PGE_Mayra) January 11, 2023

Many of the trees were felled during an onslaught of thunderstorms Tuesday that knocked out power to tens of thousands of people across the Bay Area, while dropping between .25 and 1.25 inches of rain across most of the South Bay, the East Bay and the Peninsula. Much of the Santa Cruz mountains received between .66 and 1.4 inches of rain overnight, pushing three-day storm totals to between 6 and 8 inches of rain across much of the area.

As of 4:30 p.m. Tuesday, 24-hour precipitation totals around the Bay Area included 1.21 inches in San Francisco, 1.18 inches in Oakland, 1.11 inches in Concord,.41 inches in San Jose and .40 inches in Livermore, according to the weather service.

More than 40,000 PG&E customers were without power as of 5 p.m. Tuesday — the majority of them in the South Bay where more than 27,000 customers remained without electricity, according to the utility provider.

To the east across the Sierra Nevada, a remarkable run of snowfall continued to push the state’s snowpack higher — reaching 215% of its average for this date across the state, according to the California Department of Water Resources. The southern Sierra already has received more than it normally gets by April 1, while the northern Sierra is about 75% of the way to that mark.

Another .1 to .25 inches of rain is expected to fall over much of the Bay Area on Wednesday, with higher amounts forecasted to hit the North Bay and the Santa Cruz Mountains, according to the National Weather Service. Some brief showers may hit the region on Thursday or Friday, but the area should remain mostly dry under cloudy skies those days.

Many residents found themselves whiplashed from the see-sawing weather. In Soquel, near Santa Cruz, Roman Bodnarchuk wondered aloud at the next curveball from Mother Nature after a dramatic two weeks of joy and catastrophe.

Just after Christmas, he had finally succeeded in getting his war-refugee parents out of Ukraine — where they lived near a power station under frequent Russian bombardment — and to his rented house by Soquel Creek.

“It’s very stressful,” said Bodnarchuk, 30. “You can imagine how frustrating it was to leave the house when my mom is sick and having to deal with all these situations. Hopefully the house withstands all this damage.”

He couldn’t help but feel a sense of dread at viewing forecasts for additional rain in the coming week

“We’re very worried,” Bodnarchuk said. “It’s been difficult enough already.”

Rick Hurd, Julia Prodis Sulek, Jason Green and the Associated Press contributed to this report. 

Because of risk of flooding and mudslides, evacuation warnings have been issued for some residents in Alameda and Santa Clara counties.

The map above shows the approximate areas of the advisories. As of Monday afternoon, there were no mandatory evacuations in those counties.

Alameda County

Residents of Kilkare Road, Palomares Road and Niles Canyon Road are “strongly encouraged” to evacuate. Details and updates at the sheriff’s Facebook and Twitter pages.

Santa Clara County

Warnings issued for:

• The Highway 101/Bolsa Road area, south of Gilroy.

• Pacheco Pass River Basin residents on Lovers Lane between Highway 152 and Shore Road, and El Toro Road between Highway 152 and Bloomfield Avenue.

• Uvas Reservoir watershed areas including Thousand Trails RV Park, Uvas Pines RV Park and homes south of Lions Peak and in the area of Watsonville and Day roads.

Residents of those areas are advised to prepare for short-notice evacuation. Find details and updates at the sheriff’s Facebook page.

San Mateo County and Contra Costa County

No official warnings had been issued as of Monday morning, but the west side of the Peninsula and the Danville area were under advisory on the Zonehaven emergency map.

In San Pablo, residents of 11th Street between Palmer Avenue and Rivers Street have been urged to use sandbags to protect their homes and to be prepared to leave if the neighborhood canal floods.

South of the Bay Area

Warnings including mandatory evacuations have been issued in Santa Cruz County and Monterey County. Santa Cruz County’s evacuation zones can be found on the Zonehaven map. For Monterey County’s warnings and orders, see the sheriff’s Facebook or Twitter page.

• Storm tracking map

• How to sign up for flood alerts

• The best way to use sandbags

The latest atmospheric river-fed storm is expected to pack damaging winds and drop several more inches of rain over much of the Bay Area — a double-whammy that forecasters say should peak Monday morning and linger through Tuesday. Even more storms are forecast to make landfall beginning later this week — threatening to further saturate soils during one of the Bay Area’s most waterlogged stretches in recent years.

On Sunday afternoon, Gov. Gavin Newsom implored Californians to avoid driving through flooded roadways and to prepare for even more water in the near future — noting that 12 people had died over the last week and a half due to storms across the state.

“Use your common sense,” Newsom said at a press conference. “Don’t test fate… just a foot of water and your car’s floating. So it’s really important that people are mindful, and again, just use their common sense.”

The National Weather Service issued a flood warning for areas along the Guadalupe River above the Almaden Expressway in San Jose. The river is expected to reach its flood state of 9.5 feet by 9 a.m. Monday before cresting at 11.5 feet at about 4 p.m. that day.

A flood watch also exists through Tuesday for almost the entire Bay Area. Alameda Creek near Niles Canyon and Sunol could reach its flood stage of 9 feet on Monday morning before cresting that afternoon, just shy of its 14-foot, 9-inch record. Also at risk of topping their banks were Arroyo de la Laguna at Verona in Alameda County and the San Lorenzo River in Santa Cruz County.

On Sunday afternoon, Santa Clara County officials issued evacuation warnings — essentially, advisements to be prepared to leave a moment’s notice — to people living in the watershed areas of the Uvas Reservoir and Pacheco Pass River Basin, due to flooding concerns. The warnings are impacting roughly 1,600 people, according to the county.

“This is going to be dangerous,” said Brayden Murdock, a National Weather Service meteorologist.

Updated forecast rainfall totals for round 2, expected to begin tonight between 10 pm and midnight. The heaviest rain will occur between 4 am and 4 pm Monday. Slight lowering of totals from the Bay Area northward and southern valleys. More details in follow up tweet.#CAwx

1/x pic.twitter.com/zs2HzaehAH

— NWS Bay Area (@NWSBayArea) January 8, 2023

Standing under a break in the clouds on Sunday in San Francisco’s Potrero Hill neighborhood, Becky Luong expressed fatigue at the unrelenting pace of storms. Her home’s garage in the Portola neighborhood was flooded with about an inch of water during Wednesday’s storm — ruining several pairs of shoes stored down there and leaving damaged a few bags of concrete.

“I’ve never experienced such a big storm like this,” said Luong, who has lived in the city for close to three decades. “It is the wind that makes it worse. This is different. I got scared.”

“I’m tired,” she added, about the recent wet weather. “I’m so grateful to see the sun today.”

Nearby, Nick Bulley waited in line for workers to fill his car with sandbags to protect his house in the hilly Twin Peaks neighborhood. The backyard and first floor of his newly renovated home were flooded during the New Year’s Eve storm with an inch of water, likely causing thousands of dollars in damage. On Sunday, he ran a dehumidifier to suck up all the moisture and limit the cost of repairs.

“This was just an unusual event,” Bulley said. “We weren’t prepared. We didn’t have sandbags. Now we’re making sure we have something to at least toss in front of the doors.”

The heaviest downpours should begin to subside by midday Monday, Murdock said, though chances for additional precipitation should linger through Tuesday. Most of the Bay Area — including San Francisco and Oakland — could see 2 to 3 inches of rain by Tuesday, the weather service said. San Jose is expected to see a little more than 2 inches from this storm.

The heaviest rainfall should fall over the waterlogged Santa Cruz Mountains, where 5 to 7 inches of rain is expected, with a few places seeing as much as 8 inches. To the south, the Santa Lucia Mountains along the Big Sur coast could see 8 to 12 inches of rain in some spots.

Winds of 25 to 35 mph are expected across much of the Bay Area’s lower-lying regions, with gusts potentially hitting 60 mph, the National Weather Service said while issuing a high wind warning. Along the coast and the Bay Area’s peaks, forecasters are expecting winds of 35 to 50 mph and gusts of up to 80 mph.

“This is also going to be a wind event,” said Murdock, adding that “when you do have strong winds after seeing plenty of moisture in the soil, you can see trees fall.”

The storm marks the latest atmospheric river to drench Northern California over the last couple of weeks, whipsawing the region from one of its driest three-year runs in recorded history to a state of perpetual flood risk. Oakland, for example, has received 15.84 inches of rain since Dec. 1 — almost all of it in the last two weeks. That’s more than two-thirds of the 22.89 inches of rain it normally gets in a calendar year.

Still, even though the recent wet weather has begun to alleviate drought conditions across Northern California, experts say even more moisture is needed to put an end the region’s historic drought. Water levels at some of the state’s largest reservoirs — including Lake Shasta, Lake Oroville and Trinity Lake — remain below historical averages for this time of year, even though some have started to tick upward in recent weeks.

He said that federal resources have been mobilized to help the National Weather Service’s forecasts. Five Air Force C-130s and a National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration aircraft are flying over the Pacific Ocean – reaching as far as Hawaii – to gather data on the coming storms.

“These next storms are really going to start seeing some flood stages be reached,” said Anderson, during a call with reporters Saturday. “There’s a lot to keep an eye on and a lot to track.”

For more on the latest emergency warnings, go to aware.zonehaven.com.

High Wind Warning has been issued for our region starting tonight at 8 PM into Monday 4 PM. Expect southerly winds near 20 to 35 mph with gust up to 60 mph in the valley locations and 35 to 50 mph with gust up 80 mph along the coast and highest peaks. #CAwx #highwind pic.twitter.com/VbzaXV22ez

— NWS Bay Area (@NWSBayArea) January 8, 2023

But the Bay Area’s vast network of gauges, strategically placed and linked to powerful telecommunication lines and computers, offer early warning of rising waters, helping protect lives and property from flood damage.

“We can tell first responders, with some certainty, that our gauges are saying it’s going to be a flood-prone area in one hour and 45 minutes,” said Kevin Murray of the Palo Alto-based San Francisquito Creek Joint Powers Authority. “That gives them some time to get ahead of the disaster.”

This week, with a series of storms just past and more on their way, experts patrolled rivers and creeks to inspect and recalibrate their precious tools to ensure the accuracy of water data. After last Saturday’s fierce storm, they ask: Is the equipment still working? Have flow conditions changed due to downed trees, clogged bridges, eroded banks or blocked storm drains?

“We’ve been out with replacement equipment, assessing problems, assembling the pieces and doing repairs so that everything is operational,” said geologist Scott Brown with Berkeley-based Balance Hydrologics, a consulting firm that helps Bay Area agencies manage flood warning systems.

“With additional storms coming, we need to mobilize fast in order to get everything back up and running again,” he said.

Even as climate change increases the risk of floods, protection strategies are shifting away from structural measures, such as walls, gates and levees. The role of prediction, and warnings, is growing.

The gauges can provide days or hours of advance notice, giving residents time to sandbag, move cars, help the homeless, lift electronics and precious antiques off the floor — or seek higher ground.

On New Year’s Eve, a gauge on the Stanford campus alerted authorities at 8:43 a.m. that San Francisquito Creek, between Santa Clara and San Mateo counties, had reached “flood monitoring stage” and was continuing to rise. At 9:06 a.m., officials issued a public flood advisory. At 9:30 a.m., residents were alerted that within a half-hour, flooding was likely at Palo Alto’s narrow Pope-Chaucer Bridge. Water rose to about 21 feet, frighteningly close to overflowing the creek banks.

Other watersheds may allow more time, and earlier warning, said Jack Xu, senior engineer at Santa Clara Valley Water District. For instance, flooding along San Jose’s Guadalupe River can be forecast two to three hours in advance. Coyote Creek flooding may take a day. But in urban concrete channels, water may need only 30 minutes to flow from the mountains to downtowns.

Surveillance starts two to three weeks in advance of a storm, said Xu.

Weather is notoriously tough to predict in the Bay Area, a mountainous landscape perched on the edge of the cold ocean. Low and fast-moving jets of moist air scatter into a patchwork quilt pattern of precipitation, affecting locales differently.

Looking ahead at long-range weather forecasts, Xu said, “We see: ‘Is it a wet pattern? Is it a dry pattern?’ When you see back-to-back storms, you know you have to plan resources and think, operationally, about how you’re going to move water, if you need to.”

Plans get more targeted as time draws near, because forecasts improve within 10 days of a storm. “But if the forecast is inaccurate, everything downstream is wrong,” said Xu.

Using computer models, they calculate how much of the predicted rainfall will become runoff, based on past history, soil saturation and local geology.

The big decisions start five days before a storm, Xu said. There are regional conference calls with PG&E, other utilities and various cities, where they ponder: Should they release water from reservoirs to make room for additional runoff? Do they need to boost staffing? “We weigh the consequences with the risk,” Xu said.

Crews on the ground assess a creek’s condition, looking for debris and other risks. This effort is intensified if winds are forecast.

Once the storm lands, the role of rain gauges becomes critical. Perched in distant mountains, these gauges — pipes with a funnel, bucket and tipping mechanism at the top — measure precipitation. They tell officials what to expect.

Stream gauges have a membrane that precisely measures the depth of water and converts it into a flow rate. They transmit every hour and send a packet of four 15-minute time stamps. When a certain threshold is reached, the sensors can send data every five minutes.

Contra Costa County Flood Control & Water Conservation District manages 32 rain gauges and 16 stream gauges. The Santa Clara Valley Water District has a network of 70 stream and rain gauges. Alameda County has about 90 rain and stream gauges.

These gauges, powered by solar panels, send electronic signals to data loggers via radio, landlines, cell phone signals or satellites. With ever-increasing computer power, software processes the many signals into a computer database, which monitors the information as it is received. It triggers a warning when certain thresholds — say, water filling 80 percent of a creek’s capacity — are reached.

When waters run high, officials must decide whether to issue an electronic flood alert to local residents downstream. Because different locations have different flood risks, the warnings can be localized.

A revolution in technology is allowing for better forecasting. Over the past decade, the National Weather Service has developed weather models that are better suited to the West Coast, and widespread availability of cell services means it’s easier to transmit real-time information, Xu said. Supercomputing allows more advanced calculations, under many different scenarios.

New “X-Band Radar” is helping estimate rainfall in specific communities. In Contra Costa County, radar was installed last month on Rocky Ridge near Las Trampas Regional Preserve, according to hydrologist Mark Boucher. Radar for the Santa Clara Valley Water District sits atop the Penitencia Water Treatment Plant facility. They are part of a future regional network of radars — including Marin, Sonoma, San Francisco and Santa Cruz — that will provide local data about atmospheric rivers.

As new storms approach, “we’re watching, because every day it might change,” Xu said. “Because it’s nature, there are a lot of unknowns, so our response needs to be ready.”

This latest storm is an atmospheric river, essentially a giant conveyor belt of water in the sky and moisture-rich maelstrom rolling in from the Pacific Ocean to fill California’s reservoirs and blanket the Sierra Nevada with snow, which has the potential to cause catastrophic flooding and mudslides.

By the scale used to measure the strength and impact of such weather systems, this torrent is a Category 3 out of 5. The scale meteorologists use bases the five categories of intensity on the duration of the tempest and the magnitude of water content called the Integrated Water Vapor Transport (IVT).

Wednesday’s atmospheric river is also being labeled a “bomb cyclone” for its rapid strengthening off-shore. That term describes an area of low pressure that intensified by 24 millibars within 24 hours, with millibars being a unit of measurement for atmospheric pressure.

Grounded from lofty definitions and weather science meanwhile are the residents grappling with surviving the wind-whipped deluge. Below are photos documenting their experiences. While we encourage your safest preparation and response to this emergency, if you have any visuals to share, please email photovideo@bayareanewsgroup.com.

The worst of the fast-moving tempest was expected to pass late Wednesday night, leaving Northern California windswept and reeling from its third major storm in just over a week. Fueled by a meteorological phenomenon known as a “bomb cyclone” churning over the Pacific, the storm was expected to pummel a broad swath of California from Crescent City to Los Angeles, while raising the threat of mudslides and debris flows over inland burn scars and causing dangerous, near-impossible travel conditions over the Sierra.

“We anticipate that this may be one of the most challenging and impactful series of storms to touch down in California in the last five years,” said Nancy Ward, director of the Governor’s Office of Emergency Services.

Across the Bay Area, powerful winds left thousands of people without power Wednesday afternoon, while forcing one school district in South San Francisco to cancel classes Thursday. In San Jose, local authorities fanned out in a last-minute push to evacuate unhoused people living along creek beds — a warning that some people refused to heed, citing an unwillingness to leave their make-shift homes. Others thought the dangers were overblown.

Hours before the storm’s arrival, Gov. Gavin Newsom declared a state of emergency to hasten the state’s response. Authorities in Santa Cruz County issued mandatory evacuations for areas near Felton, Soquel and Watsonville, while Alameda County sheriff’s deputies went door-to-door urging people to leave their homes near Sunol, due to the risk of flood waters or felled trees.

A few hours before the storm began whipping the coast, Rio del Mar sisters-in-law Mary and Maureen Sztenderowicz fled their house just down the coast from Santa Cruz, where Aptos Creek meets the ocean. The two planned to stay for a night or two with a relative in Santa Cruz — but were uncertain of what they’d return to find at their home a few blocks from the ocean.

“We don’t want to be stuck and not able to get out,” said Mary Sztenderowicz, who is in her 70s.

Elsewhere in the neighborhood, Santa Cruz County Sheriff’s Office deputies posted red evacuation orders outside homes in the Rio del Mar flatlands Wednesday afternoon. “We’re not going to make people leave,” said Deputy Ryan York. Instead, he told people that if they don’t evacuate, they may not be able to get help in case of emergency.

Of primary concern was Aptos Creek, York said. Although the waterway was not raging Wednesday afternoon, ocean swells and tides — both forecasted to be very high Wednesday night and Thursday morning, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration — are expected to surge in, and by blocking outflow of stream water, raise the creek’s level even higher, York said.

Wednesday’s storm did not appear potent as the New Year’s Eve deluge that dropped record amounts of rain in some parts of the Bay Area and caused mudslides that left some roadways, including Highway 9 near Felton, closed.

But soils in the area appear to be increasingly saturated, compounding the risk of flooding. Oakland, for example, received 13.16 inches of rain in December – the vast majority of it in the last week, when 8 to 11 inches of rain fell over the city. That’s two and a half times the amount received over the previous 11 months – an astonishing amount for a city that normally only gets about 22 inches of rain every calendar year.

And this time, meteorologists feared the storm’s potential for damaging winds more than rain.

One gust on Wednesday along Soda Springs Road above Los Gatos reached 78 mph, while another near Kahler Court in Milpitas hit 75 mph, according to the National Weather Service. Another gust hit 56 mph in Salinas, a town that sits less than 100 feet above sea level, where the winds from such storms are normally less severe.

“This is a wind event as much as it is a heavy rain event,” said Brayden Murdock, a National Weather Service meteorologist. “And some of these (winds) are filtering into lower elevations, which means they’re going into areas that are populated. That means trouble for power lines in particular.”

More than 11,000 Pacific Gas and Electric customers were without power early Wednesday afternoon — a number that forecasters feared would rise as the storm came ashore. That included 8,295 customers in the South Bay and 1,169 people in the East Bay.

PG&E dispatched 2,900 workers Wednesday to tackle downed power lines and other outages throughout the Bay Area. That included 800 people to monitor electric incidents, 360 four-person electrical crews and 397 so-called trouble-men, who are distribution line technicians, system inspectors and first responders from the utility.

Seventy-four flights — or about 8% of the day’s schedule — were cancelled at San Francisco International Airport due to wind and rain that reduced visibility and caused flight controllers to stagger airport landings and departures on some runways, said Doug Yakel, an airport spokesman. Another 174 flights were delayed an average of 35 minutes, impacting about 20% of the day’s flights, he said.

To the south, Caltrans closed a sprawling section of Highway 1 along the entire Big Sur coast amid concerns of debris falling onto the roadway. The closure extended from just south of Deetjen’s Big Sur Inn in Monterey County to Ragged Point in San Luis Obispo County. The agency gave no estimate for when the roadway would reopen.

Concerns about mudslides extended to several communities across the Bay Area.

Santa Clara County closed several roads due to mudslides, flooding and downed trees, including parts of Calaveras, Felter, Mines, and Sierra roads.

In Richmond, the residents of 15 homes along Seaview Dr. and Seacliff Way were urged by police to evacuate after the hillside behind the development started to slide along a walking trail on the slope. A local contractor immediately began mitigation measures on the hill, including spreading plastic tarps over the fissures to prevent additional hazards, according to an online post from Mayor Tom Butt.

The prospect of a waterlogged hillside growing unstable during the storm left other nearby residents on edge. It’s common to see soil carried down the hillsides of this Richmond neighborhood when it rains heavily, said Faith Miller, who lives on nearby Flagship Place.

“We have retaining walls, but that’s a lot of dirt up there,” Miller said as the brunt of the storm hit Wednesday afternoon. “We’ve been looking and keeping on eye on our backyard.”

Austin Turner and Harry Harris contributed to this report.