The Central Coast will get a temporary reprieve from the rain that has soaked the region for the past week, but it will return.
Meteorologist Brian Garcia at the National Weather Service of Monterey said chilly morning temperatures will continue into Friday morning but skies will start to clear Saturday following a few lingering showers.
“By the late weekend things begin to clear out with a warming and drying trend that will remain with us through mid-week,” Garcia said. “But by late next week, we are looking at a change into another wet pattern.”
The weather has wreaked havoc in Santa Cruz County, with winds on Feb. 4 that reached 64 miles per hour.
A man was killed in Boulder Creek after a tree crashed into his home, as winds pounded Santa Cruz County after several heavy rainstorms.
Santa Cruz County Sheriff’s spokeswoman Ashley Keehn identified the man as 45-year-old Robert Brainard III.
Deputies and firefighters responded around 3:30pm to a report of a tree that slammed into a home on the 14100 block of Highway 9.
Keehn says that one resident made it out of the house, but another was trapped inside.
“Unfortunately, the resident inside sustained injuries from the tree falling into the home and was pronounced deceased at the scene,” she said.
There were no other injuries reported, although downed power lines and fallen trees forced the closure of several roads throughout the county.
Stephanie Magallon, spokesperson for Pacific Gas & Electric said that as of Thursday afternoon there were 9,000 customers on the central Coast without power due to storm issues. She added that 6,000 of those were in Santa Cruz County.
“A lot of the problems are in the Santa Cruz Mountains where narrow roads and dangerous conditions delay our repair crews,” she said. “So in many cases clearing washed out roads has to be done before our crews can gain access. In some cases crews have to hike in on food or use all terrain vehicles to open up roads to allow our trucks in; this can take time. Sometimes we are dealing with 70-foot poles on narrow roads where we might need traffic control, or deploy a helicopter, and to do it safely, it can be time consuming.”
Magallon did say that PG&E was hoping, through “non-stop work,” to have power restored to all customers by Thursday night.
