(Shmuel Thaler – Santa Cruz Sentinel file) 15 as a northwest swell that continued to roll powerful sets onto the Santa Cruz County coastline. Waves crash along East Cliff Drive in Pleasure Point Dec. Violent winds across the county resulted in several downed trees, power lines and wildfires, which forced approximately 120 homes to be evacuated in the Boulder Creek, Aptos Hills and Watsonville areas and left nearly 24,000 residents without power across the county. “That pattern we typically don’t see this time of year.” “When we set up that pressure differential, that’s when we get strong winds,” Garcia said. The collision of different temperatures and pressures create extreme weather events. However, that jet stream dived south and collided with the warm, high-pressure bubble that was sitting over the Bay Area. Usually, the jet stream hits the Pacific Northwest and creates storms there. This is what causes the storms in the north and the swells along the coast. In La Niña years, a low-pressure jet stream sweeps the north Pacific. “We were sitting under a bubble of high pressure,” Garcia said. ![]() Temperatures in the area averaged in the 70s with clear skies, which is unseasonably warm for January, which is about 10 degrees to 15 degrees warmer than normal. Warm weather and sunshine graced the greater Bay Area, as the beaches packed with people and residents went for walks in shorts and t-shirts, last week. Typically, the swell brings storms with it, but this year the California coast got the benefit of the big swells and got to enjoy nice weather. Sometimes that activity passes the contiguous United States and head toward Hawai’i, in other cases, it hits landfall sooner in California, he said. In a La Niña year, the North Pacific becomes very active with storms, which creates a lot of ocean activity. The waves are the result of this being a La Niña year, according to Garcia. People at Lighthouse Point in Santa Cruz are enveloped in a thick fog on the morning of Jan.
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