NWS issues rare ‘storm warning’ for Central Coast boaters

The National Weather Service is issuing a rare Storm Warning for mariners and boaters.

Forecasters are expecting winds topping 55 miles per hour over the ocean, which means no one should be on the water.

Brendan Kelly lives on his boat at the Monterey Harbor, and Friday night, he was making sure his son’s craft is ready for what is coming. For Kelly, weathering the storms that blow through there is a matter of routine, just like the last one.

“Well, it wasn’t as bad as I thought it might be,” he said. “This is a well-constructed, pretty protected harbor. We definitely knew it was blowing.”

With another big one approaching, the NWS is predicting winds over 48 knots on the ocean overnight and wind gusts reaching 70 miles per hour.

“Any time we issue a storm warning, it’s a big deal since it’s pretty rare,” said Duane Dykema, an NWS forecaster. “We probably issue storm warnings once every ten to 20 years. So it is a major storm.”

Winds will not be as strong over land, but they will have an impact, especially in the higher elevations. Dykema says all the ingredients are there to make this storm a uniquely powerful one.

“Any time you get those sharp contrast of air masses with the cold air and the warm moist air coming together, you get what’s called rapid intensification of a storm system,” he said.

“We actually have a neighbor over by the other boat who’s actually somebody headed south, and he’s pulled in here and is going to wait out the storm,” said Kelly. “He’s in a sail boat.”

And the impacts on land could be just as serious, with the NEWS expecting power outages, downed trees and possible flash flooding across the Central Coast.

“We’re going to see some pretty heavy rain rates later tonight and into tomorrow morning on the order of an inch an hour, which is pretty intense,” said Dykema.

So Kelly is making sure everything is ready and tied down, hoping to ride out the storm.

“Yeah, on nights like this, we probably won’t sleep as well as we normally do just because it’ll be noisy and moving around a lot,” he said.

The NWS says this storm will likely be stronger than the storm we saw about two weeks ago, which did cause damages in several areas.