Stormy Winter (Continued) San Francisco Suffers Flood (Also Vermont Wind Update)

Flooding in San Francisco Saturday. Photo by Robert Evans

Winters tend to be stormy in the United States, and San Francisco tends to be wet but San Francisco really got it yesterday.

The rain came so fast and so hard that several neighborhoods flooded. Several houses suffered quite a bit of flood damage in the city's West Portal neighborhood.  There were several mudslides, and the wet soil prompted at least one  large tree to all on a house.

San Francisco got about an inch of rain, which isn't really that big a deal for coastal California in the winter.

However, about three quarters of an inch of it came within an hour, and all that water poured all at once down the city's hilly streets, collecting in the low spots, causing the flooding.  It usually doesn't rain quite that hard in San Francisco.

All good storms head east, and that's what this one is doing.  For the nation as a whole, this one won't be nearly as bad as the strongest ones we've had in the autumn and early winter. But the storm will cause its problems.

It is helping to drop yet more snow on the northern Plains and northern Great Lakes, which are parts of the country that have had a lot of snow so far this year.

The storm center is still far to Vermont's west, but it's working in tandem with that departing high pressure system to produce the rather strong and gusty winds today, especially in the Champlain Valley. It looks like it will stay windy well into Monday at least.

The storm's going by to our west, which means it's going to rain.  That'll be a change from this morning, which was the coldest so far this season. It was 5 above in Burlington, and as cold as 12 below in Island Pond, Vermont this morning.

The see-saw will continue. After the storm goes by, another cold snap, as chilly as the one we had overnight, is due here Wednesday, Thursday and into Friday morning before we start another warmup.

As the storm's cold front comes through New England, it might slow down for a time near the southern coast and into the Middle Atlantic states Wednesday morning. That might produce a few inches of snow in these areas.

Here in Vermont, there will only be light snow showers behind the storm, with little accumulation.

This storm will also cause strong winds, heavy rain and possible flooding in Atlantic Canada, too, by the way.

Here's a news clip of the San Francisco flooding: