A ruthless winter storm bore down on the Bay Area and Northern California on Wednesday, prompting emergency proclamations, school closures and multiple hazard warnings of potential flooding, debris flows and severe winds.

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. 

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