santa cruz yacht harbor storm damage

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Storm damage: Here's before-and-after look at hardest-hit areas in Capitola, Santa Cruz

SANTA CRUZ, Calif. (KGO) -- One of the hardest-hit areas from Wednesday's devastating storm was the Santa Cruz County coastline.

Video showed the storm surge destroying a part of the Capitola Wharf and washing up massive logs on Santa Cruz beach.

But to really get a sense of how big the waves were, you need to look at what it normally looks like.

TIMELINE: 'Parade of storms' lined up for Bay Area as bomb cyclone recovery continues

ABC7 News found a few spots in the Santa Cruz area and compared a before shot on Google Maps to the videos gathered during Thursday's epic storm.

SANTA CRUZ - East Cliff Drive

We found this unbelievable video from a house next to Moran Lake Beach. During normal conditions, the water sits about 150 feet from East Cliff Drive.

But in the video from the storm, a massive wave can be seen rolling completely over that 150 feet, going over East Cliff Drive, and flooding into the neighboring Moran Lake.

The home that sits on the Southern part of the beach was also badly damaged, as the wave in the video smashed through the waterfront part of the house, went through the entire home, and came out of the garage.

CAPITOLA WHARF

This iconic Capitola landmark usually stands about 20 feet above the water (depending on the tide) as seen in the before image from Google Maps.

But during the height of the high surf, the tops of the waves were regularly slamming into the upper platform of the wharf.

Ultimately, the powerful waves, destroyed a large section of the wharf, making it unusable and in need of major repairs.

RELATED: From washed-away piers to devastating flooding, here's a look at storm damage around Bay Area

CAPITOLA - Soquel Creek

Before images of this creek, show it calmly flowing into the ocean at Capitola State Beach.

A number of restaurants along the Esplanade look out onto this creek, including Margaritaville, Capitola Bar & Grill, Paradise Beach Grille, and the Sand Bar Capitola.

These restaurants normally sit around 400 feet from the ocean's edge and 5-10 feet above the creek, but the video from Thursday show waves crashing all the way up the creek and washing into and over the outdoor patios of these restaurants.

APTOS PIER - Seacliff State Beach

This pier used to connect to the iconic '"Cement Ship" until the landmark was damaged in previous storms.

Before images of the pier, show that it also stood about 20 feet above the water (depending on the tide).

But videos from Thursday show waves rolling over the top of the pier and ultimately demolishing a huge chunk of the wooden structure.

Watch the latest AccuWeather forecast and take a look at recent weather stories and videos.

If you're on the ABC7 News app, click here to watch live

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• SANTA CRUZ COUNTY
• STORM DAMAGE
• STORM RECOVERY

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Santa Cruz Wharf damaged again from gusty winds and powerful winds

SANTA CRUZ, Calif. (KION-TV) - UPDATE ON FEB. 5, 2024 AT 6:24 PM- The Santa Cruz Wharf sustained significant damage from the winter storm on Sunday night.

Tony Eillot who is the director of Parks and Recreation for the City of Santa Cruz said that the end of the wharf which includes the Dolphin Restaurant, restroom and sea lion viewing holes are closed.

Elliot said the Dolphin Restaurant which was damaged in December are still talking with the city officials on what their next steps will be.

The city that there could be a pop-up Dolphin Restaurant this summer but that is still in the planning stages.

Businesses slowly reopen on Santa Cruz Wharf, Dolphin Restaurant still closed

UPDATE ON JAN. 3, 2024 AT 6:34 PM- Businesses on the Santa Cruz Wharf are slowly reopening after parts of the wharf were damaged last week

The city says large swells on the wharf right under the Dolphin Restaurant which has called the wharf since 1963.

The damage was surprising to Jill Veccione who has worked on the Wharf for over 30 years as the manager of Marinis Candles

""I was surprised. I've seen a lot of waves and a lot of weather out here," said Veccione.

According to Travis Beck who is the Superintendent of Parks for the City of Santa Cruz, the edge of the wharf's support system was wiped out by the waves.

"We lost several pilings right underneath one of the important structural members of the wharf," Beck said. "So we do have a collapse of the decking right in that section."

The whole entrance to the end of the wharf is blocked off. Not only did this cause damage to the wharf, but it also caused structural damage to the Dolphin Restaurant.

"That corner of the restaurant is also damaged," Beck said. "And we'll get that more formally evaluated when we hear back from our engineers later next week."

The city says the last time an inspection was done at the Santa Cruz Wharf was back in 2020.

During last week's high surf, businesses shut down for a day and a half because some of the wooden pillars snapped in half.

"We were depending on that. And it was for the safety of everyone." Veccione said. "But they wanted to make sure that the sprinkler systems and the water mains were all going to be okay because there was a second king tide coming up and all that stuff's under the water."

As of Wednesday, the Dolphin Restaurant is the only business that's closed.

Beck said when the doors will reopen for the restaurant is still unknown.

""So for now, we're saying it's closed for the time being," Beck said. "And after we get that engineering report, we'll have a much clearer picture of what's going to be possible in the short term and then in the longer term.

Beck says they hope to get the engineering report by next week.

Santa Cruz Wharf partially reopens after powerful waves damage portions of the wharf

SANTA CRUZ, Calif. (KION-TV) -- The Santa Cruz Wharf has partially reopened after a high surf event saw powerful waves crash against the wharf on Thursday morning, leaving some damage behind.

Parts of the wharf were chipped away by the dangerous surf. A portion of the wharf near the Dolphin Restaurant sunk as a result of the waves

Santa Cruz Wharf staff and the city said the end of the Wharf, including the Dolphin Restaurant, restroom three and the sea lion viewing holes are closed and fenced off from the public until further notice.

The wharf was one of multiple areas impacted by the high surf on Thursday.

Capitola was underwater once again, with businesses needing to clean up after recovering from the previous Winter storm in January

The high surf on Thursday impacted the wharf in multiple areas.

Capitola was underwater once again , with businesses needing to clean up after recovering from the previous Winter storm in January.

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Dania Romero

Dania Romero is an reporter at KION News Channel 46.

Victor Guzman

Victor Guzman is the Assistant News Director at KION News Channel 5/46.

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Rising seas and frequent storms are battering California’s piers, threatening the iconic landmarks

SAN DIEGO — More storms , rising seas and huge waves are taking their toll on California’s iconic piers that have dotted the Pacific coast since the Gold Rush, posing the biggest threat yet to the beach landmarks that have become a quintessential part of the landscape.

At least a half dozen public piers are closed after being damaged repeatedly by storms over the past two years. Repair costs have climbed into the millions of dollars.

Among those shuttered is the pier in Capitola built in 1857 that predates the northern California town and is a popular spot to watch passing whales and dolphins. Another damaged by storms in San Diego, the Ocean Beach pier, offers a bird’s eye view of surfers carving waves below.

More damage is possible this year with El Nino, which is expected to bring additional storms to California caused by the temporary warming of parts of the Pacific that changes weather worldwide.  Back-to-back atmospheric rivers  began drenching California on Friday.

City engineers are looking at redesigning piers to withstand bigger surf with a rise in sea levels. Others face relocation or removal.

“We are very much in a changed environment,” said Mike Beck, director of the Center for Coastal Climate Resilience at the University of California, Santa Cruz. “And we’re not going to be able to rebuild back in the same places and in the same ways that we did before. We’re going to have to think more clearly about how we design and where we put these.”

Most piers have undergone major repairs after enduring everything from to fires to erosion. But officials say they are now being damaged at an unprecedented rate.

Waves rising to heights topping 20-feet (6-meters) in late December pummeled the 855-foot-long (260.6-meter) Capitola Wharf in Santa Cruz County, only months after repairs following storms in January 2023 that collapsed a large section. The Capitola Wharf is a pier by nautical standards since it runs perpendicular to the shore, versus a traditional wharf running parallel.

San Diego’s Ocean Beach pier, a nearly 2,000-foot (609.6-meter) concrete structure built in 1966, has been repeatedly battered since 2019. The pier was still undergoing repairs after beatings from high surf that closed it twice last year when a monster swell in January wiped away a piling.

The city is exploring replacing the structure after spending more than $1.7 million in fixes over the past five years. It has secured $8.4 million in state funds for a new one. Among the three proposed designs is one with interconnected pathways, giving it a different look.

California’s state park service demolished the 93-year-old pier at Seaside State Beach near Aptos in Santa Cruz County after a January 2023 storm surge smashed it in half.

Communities are grappling with whether they can afford to keep their piers, which will need taller and stronger pilings that could make their historic look more industrial, Beck said.

But those are tough conversations for many who consider the piers almost sacred.

“It’s sometimes a little bit of a funny thing here in California, the way that we love our piers,” he said.

For generations, the structures have provided families, fishers, tourists and others a peaceful place to experience the ocean without getting wet.

In Ventura, west of Los Angeles, the Visitors & Convention Bureau waxes poetic about the pier built in 1872 that it calls the city’s centerpiece.

“Walk Ventura’s beaches and, in the distance, it wavers like a child’s matchstick project,” the bureau states on its website. “Sit on the sand at its base (on a calm day) and it whispers a lovely song any ocean (and pier) lover knows.”

California’s oldest piers served steamships and were lifelines for settlements to get lumber, bricks and cement with much of the coast decades from being reached by a railroad. Piers were later built for tourism like the Santa Monica pier, which has an amusement park with the world’s first solar-powered Ferris Wheel.

In December, Ventura’s pier already was undergoing repairs from the January 2023 storms when the monster swell that damaged San Diego’s pier around New Year’s eve also wiped away or damaged 19 pilings supporting Ventura’s pier.

Rising sea levels from global warming is causing the waves to be bigger  off California’s coast , according to research. The coast is also seeing some of the highest tides of the season.

“We’re really seeing the confluence of all these factors coming together. And that’s going to keep happening,” Beck said. “And here in an El Nino year as well, we also see increases in sea levels, even over and above the kinds of increases that we predict long term with sea level rise.”

During a visit to Capitola last year to assess California’s widespread storm damage,  President Joe Biden  said global warming is challenging rebuilding efforts.

Capitola’s Public Works Director Jessica Kahn said climate change was taken into account for its $8 million pier project slated for completion this fall.

“The city went over many iterations and different designs and different tactics to make the wharf more resilient and finally settled on widening the wharf,” she said, adding that the narrow part of the trestle will go from three to six pilings.

The new pilings also will have the ability to be raised as sea levels go up.

Kahn said she has no doubt it is worth investing millions to preserve a relic of the past whose sole purpose today is for pleasure, given the number of memories soaked into the wooden wharf.

“When we had our damage here this past January of 2023, you would not believe the amount of phone calls we got. We got obviously from people nearby, but from people who come here annually, people who are out of the country,” she said.

Over the years, Inge Jechart has spent time on the pier gazing down at schools of anchovies being chased by seals as birds circle overhead.

As it undergoes repairs, she now stands on a bluff to watch the crews.

“I think they’re going to do a great job. Yes, we’re having stronger storms, and the weather is changing. But I think we can do it so that it’ll last longer,” she said. “And I think it’s absolutely worth it. It brings a community together. People love walking out there.”

The Associated Press

clock This article was published more than  1 year ago

Severe flooding batters California beach town, splits pier in half

The area’s beloved capitola wharf pier was severely damaged by high, crashing waves.

An atmospheric river came ashore and unleashed colossal waves on the California coast Thursday , with Santa Cruz County, south of the San Francisco Bay area, among the hardest-hit regions.

Vibrant boardwalks full of eateries and vintage rides were thrashed by the high tide and large surf. Sandy beaches and rocky coves were submerged as rushing water dragged ocean debris past the shoreline and onto major roads.

Santa Cruz residents shared videos of the region’s beloved Capitola Wharf pier split in half by the 25-foot crashing waves. A few miles south at Seacliff Beach, the area’s iconic concrete SS Palo Alto World War I tanker, locally known as the “cement ship,” broke away from the shore and was beaten by waves.

“The storm has caused significant damage throughout the county and along the coast, including heavy damage to piers in Capitola and Seacliff. High tide and large surf is a dangerous combination — avoid the coast,” officials wrote on Santa Cruz County’s Twitter feed Thursday.

The National Weather Service issued a coastal flood warning that was in effect until 4 p.m. Thursday for California’s entire coastline. A high-surf advisory, which warned of large, breaking waves 15 to 20 feet high, is in effect until Friday evening.

Nearly 10,000 residents in Santa Cruz woke up Friday without electricity because of downed power lines, according to data from Poweroutage.us. More than 73,000 homes and businesses across the state were in the dark in the early morning.

Vulnerable low-lying homes and businesses on the coast faced the full brunt of the waves as water reaching as high as some overpass bridges rolled through. One home was pushed off its foundation, according to reports from Santa Cruz County. Other homes directly on Santa Cruz’s shores had “no protection” from the high tides, Melodye Serino, deputy county administrative officer for Santa Cruz, told The Washington Post.

The storm triggered evacuation orders Wednesday night for residents living closest to the beaches.

“We just live in a very fragile, vulnerable geographic area between the ocean and the mountains and what’s happening with climate change,” Serino said. “We’re heavily impacted.”

California is being inundated with rain. Will it ease the drought?

Santa Cruz remains under a flood watch as “multiple rounds of widespread rainfall” are expected throughout the weekend, according to the Weather Service.

As Santa Cruz residents start to pick up the pieces, officials are warning them to be prepared for emergencies, power outages and high water and the need to evacuate on short notice after another potential round of flooding.

Atmospheric rivers have been causing chaos along California’s coast since Dec. 26. Storm fronts are typical during the winter season, but this trail of storms is different. They are tapping into moisture from the tropics that is combining with the normal yearly storm systems, bringing more rain than California usually sees, Brooke Bingaman, a meteorologist at the Weather Service office in the Bay Area, told The Post.

“In this scenario, we’re just getting storm, after storm, after storm, with no really good dry breaks in between. And that’s why there is such elevated concern and increasing impact,” Bingaman said.

Forecasters are predicting three more waves of storms by the end of next week.

What it’s like to suffer through an atmospheric river in California

“This pattern is expected to continue throughout week 1 (January 6-12) and is likely during week 2 (January 13-19), as several more impactful atmospheric river events are expected,” the Weather Service wrote in a Thursday update.

The total damage from this week’s surge is not yet known, but officials anticipate that it will take several years to recover.

“This is a five-year plan for recovery,” Serino said.

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Battered by Storms, California Coastal Towns Prepare for Another Deluge

Hundreds of homes in the Santa Cruz region were damaged by flooding and wind. Weary residents are steeling themselves for even worse conditions this week.

Extreme rain, wind and powerful waves hit the coast around Santa Cruz, Calif., last week. Another severe storm is expected on Monday. Credit... Mike Kai Chen for The New York Times

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By Kellen Browning and Soumya Karlamangla

• Published Jan. 9, 2023 Updated Jan. 10, 2023

APTOS, Calif. — Chuck Hawley stared out at the waves swirling through Monterey Bay as he prepared to destroy the small beachfront home his parents built by hand in 1957.

He had no choice: Storm-fueled waves in the region, just east of Santa Cruz, had torn the 1,100-square-foot house off its foundations and floated it 30 feet into the street. There it sat, miraculously still intact but posing a hazard by blocking the road to cars.

Mr. Hawley’s parents started bringing him and his siblings to the beach house when he was 2, and Mr. Hawley, now the property manager, often rented it to family friends. He recalled sitting on the deck and watching the surf for hours with his father, who has since died. Mr. Hawley, 67, had hoped that one day his grandchildren would form similar memories there.

Instead, he was left with a sense of emptiness. “We’ve had two days to come to the conclusion that this house that’s been around for 65 years is no more,” he said, choking up.

A barrage of powerful storms has surprised residents across Northern California with an unrelenting period of extreme weather stretching over weeks, with only small intervals of dryness. These storms have toppled trees, washed out streets and knocked out power for hundreds of thousands, but they have been particularly devastating to the Santa Cruz region, where prolonged rain and wind have combined with the unique topography to inflict recurring damage.

Already drenched by a storm on Dec. 31, the Santa Cruz area — a tourist-friendly stretch of beaches on the Central Coast of California, 70 miles south of San Francisco — was again inundated in some parts with as much as five inches of rain and driving winds of up to 75 miles per hour on Wednesday and Thursday.

And the region was experiencing some of the worst effects of the latest storm, which arrived Monday in Northern California. In the Santa Cruz Mountains, a mudslide shut down two highways, and the San Lorenzo River flooded neighborhoods. Officials ordered new evacuations in the oceanside village of Soquel, and along the Carmel River near Monterey to the south.

An unlucky confluence of high tides, storm surge and high surf left hundreds of homes and dozens of businesses damaged by floodwater and mountains of sand this past weekend. The extreme conditions eroded coastlines and beaches, destroyed parts of several piers and forced many to evacuate low-lying homes.

“We’re very concerned,” said Dave Reid, the director of the Santa Cruz County Office of Response, Recovery & Resilience. “As you get more and more of these rain events piling on top of each other, our mountains literally begin to melt, and we get more landslides and damage to our infrastructure.”

Mr. Reid said the unrelenting nature of the storms, just days apart from one another, was exhausting emergency responders and impeding the county’s efforts to assess damage and begin repairs.

“We really consider this disaster to be the cumulative effect of all of these events in such a short time frame,” he said.

Santa Cruz has long been far rainier than its neighboring counties, mostly because of its topography, said Jan Null, a veteran meteorologist and former lead forecaster for the National Weather Service. Storms coming from the Pacific Ocean slam into the Santa Cruz Mountains, forcing the air to lift and become colder, which creates more precipitation.

“It’s not uncommon in any given storm to have four times the rainfall in the Santa Cruz Mountains as you do in San Francisco,” Mr. Null said.

The drastic differences in precipitation in places just 10 miles apart is a phenomenon rarely seen outside California, driven by the proximity of the ocean and mountains, he said.

“The whole theme of the Bay Area is microclimates,” he said.

The ferocity of the waves and severity of structural damage recalled, for some residents, memories of the disastrous 1982 storm that flooded rivers, badly damaged a bridge and killed 22 people, including 10 in a landslide that occurred just as a 30-hour rainstorm let up. In January of that year, the hillside above Love Creek, about 10 miles north of Santa Cruz, turned to liquid, with approximately 600,000 cubic yards of land — enough to fill 60,000 dump trucks — sliding down the mountain.

This year’s storm rivals 1982’s, “and nothing else in between has come close,” said Carin Hanna, 78, who owns the Craft Gallery gift shop in Capitola, a town next to Santa Cruz. “It shows the incredible force of the ocean,” she added.

Santa Cruz is also prone to flooding because its creeks and its biggest waterway, the San Lorenzo River, are not big enough to contain all of the water from heavy rainfall, experts say. Over the weekend, the river was so swollen that surfers were riding waves headed out to sea, rather than the other direction, and emergency responders warned of flood risks along the banks on Monday.

Parts of West Cliff Drive, a winding Santa Cruz road at the edge of the cliffs overlooking the ocean, were closed after chunks of the street were wiped out by 20-foot-tall waves. Earlier storms had already pounded at the cliffs and washed away some barriers, like riprap — giant rocks placed at the edge of the cliffs to protect against erosion — a frightening sight for some residents.

On Thursday morning, Lindsay Maggioncalda was on her laptop in a meeting for her job at Duolingo, the language platform, on the second floor of her oceanfront home in Santa Cruz. Suddenly, a wave struck the storm-resistant window mere feet away from where she was sitting on the couch.

“Tons of water just went bam, like a huge crash, big vibrations,” Ms. Maggioncalda, 25, said. “I was gasping.”

Her father, Jeff Maggioncalda, ventured into the soaked neighborhood to film the chaos, retreating quickly when more waves blasted through the gaps in the street near him.

“This was by far the worst storm we’ve seen,” said Mr. Maggioncalda, 54, the chief executive of the online education company Coursera.

During a dry period on Saturday, residents were doing their best to clear logs from their yards, replace soggy sandbags and shovel away the sand that had burst through their garage doors.

Walking on Rio Del Mar Beach in Aptos with her two dogs, Isaura Rochin, 52, was picking up trash that had swept onto the beach. In the distance, the S.S. Palo Alto, a World War I-era concrete tanker ship beloved by local residents, who know it as the Cement Ship, had been badly damaged by the storm, and part of the pier connecting it to Seacliff State Beach had crumbled into the sea.

“I’m sad about the wharf,” Ms. Rochin said. “The Cement Ship, I’m sad, but it’s been deteriorating for years and years.”

In Capitola, as rain began to drench the streets once again, Dominick King was rushing to save anything he could from his restaurant, My Thai Beach, before the next storm. The restaurant, along with many others next to the beach, was soaked by floodwater that crept up from the foundation, severing plumbing and warping the floor.

Mr. King, 34, had just remodeled the interior after inheriting the restaurant from his mother, who had struggled to steer it through the coronavirus pandemic. Now, he expects it to be closed for months.

“We were trying to get the business back on the right foot,” he said. “Things were going really good. It’s tough, man. It’s definitely a huge setback.”

Gary Griggs, a professor of earth sciences who has taught at the University of California, Santa Cruz, since the 1960s, said that the same spots in Santa Cruz, like the Capitola pier and West Cliff Drive, had been damaged once or twice a decade by storms, but that people had “short-disaster memory.”

He said the region needed to seriously consider moving development away from the coastline because there was no way to escape inevitable sea level rise.

“What this storm is telling us is it’s time to think a little more long term and make some decisions,” he said. “We’ve been Band-Aiding things together for a long time.”

A picture caption accompanying an earlier version of this article misspelled the given name of the owner of the My Thai Beach restaurant in Capitola, Calif. He is Dominick King, not Dominic.

How we handle corrections

Kellen Browning is a technology reporter in San Francisco, where he covers the gig economy, the video game industry and general tech news. More about Kellen Browning

Soumya Karlamangla is the lead writer for the California Today newsletter, where she provides daily insights and updates from her home state. More about Soumya Karlamangla

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Evacuation warnings lifted after high surf and flooding shut down Santa Cruz, coastal areas

Marin county sees evacuation orders lifted in some areas.

In Marin County, evacuation orders have been canceled for areas around Stinson Beach. Earlier Thursday, some communities near the beach were told to be ready to go due to high surf and storm surge.

SANTA CRUZ, Calif. - The Bay Area's beach towns got hammered on Thursday as high surf and storm surges ravaged the coastline. 

Around Santa Cruz, seaside streets were littered with debris, soaked with flooding, and battered by big waves. The city closed the Santa Cruz Wharf, Main Beach and Cowell Beach because of the massive waves and resulting damage. 

At Rio Del Mar State Beach in Santa Cruz, logs littered the sandy coast and onlookers sat on perches witnessing Mother Nature in action. 

In addition, West Cliff in Santa Cruz was also closed between Columbia and David Way. The iconic road is still being repaired from last year's storms. 

Meanwhile, in Pacifica, a pair of crab fishers arrived at Linda Mar Beach and then turned around to go home. 

"Apparently, that's not going to happen," Paul Gonzales said. "But the pier's closed. These waves are outrageous." 

Steve Ramirez sighed and said: "We're just going to pack up." 

High surf warnings and advisories are in effect along the entire California coast as waves are expected to break up to 40 feet high. As of Thursday afternoon, reports from the Bay Area's coastal buoys were showing waves just under 30 feet off both the Sonoma County coast and Monterey Bay.

Huge low-pressure systems in the Pacific Ocean are pushing large groups of waves toward the California coast. 

The National Weather Service reported that its buoy off Bodega Bay recorded waves up to 28 feet on Thursday morning, closing in on the previous record of 31 feet seen during January storms at the beginning of the year.

Around Santa Cruz, seaside streets were littered with debris, soaked with flooding, and battered by big waves. The city closed the Santa Cruz Wharf, Main Beach and Cowell Beach because of the massive waves and resulting damage.

At Rio Del Mar Beach, the waves crashed over walls, flooding streets, and depositing massive trees and driftwood ashore.

"The trees act like battering rams against the houses and the garage doors that are along the street here," says resident, Steve Benedetti.

Residents in Santa Cruz County know the danger all too well. So do the authorities. But they worried about the tourists.

"We do have visitors from out of town that may not have been expecting this kind of tidal surge during their visit. So we did have deputies out here very early going door to door explaining to people hey this is coming," says Ashley Keehn, public information officer with the Santa Cruz County Sheriff's Office.

Early in the morning, the Stinson Beach Fire Department issued an evacuation order for several neighborhoods because of high surf as the winds and waves were enormous, telling people they could find a temporary safe harbor at the Stinson Beach Community Center. 

The order was issued just before 10 a.m., and people were sent to the Stinson Beach Community Center for refuge. Residents in the Calles Pinos, Pradero, Sierra, Onda Resaca, Ribera, Embarcadero, and sections of Calle Del Arroyo weren’t told to return to their homes until early in the afternoon.

Drone pilot David Golubev shot video of the swell hitting the beach around 11 a.m. and getting dangerously close to houses and buildings along the shoreline. 

"Definitely the highest tide I’ve seen so far. You could see it on the beach. It came up all the way to the top," Golubev said. "I saw it was high tide, and I heard the water so I came out to see how far the water came up."

Officials said the waves reached 10 feet, more than the National Weather Service predicted.

The evacuation order was lifted in the early afternoon when the tide receded. 

Stinson Beach Fire Chief Jesse Peri said crews are still assessing the damage in the area and at last count Thursday afternoon one person has minor injuries and a handful of homes suffered minor structural damage. 

"The community is really resilient, so they came together to help sandbag and help each other out," said Peri, who reiterated that people should continue to stay away from the water.

Further south in San Francisco, strong swells crashed against San Francisco's Fort Point.

Rio Del Mar Esplanade is currently flooded in Santa Cruz on Dec. 28, 2023. Photo: Santa Cruz County

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Santa cruz wharf reopens after being damaged by high surf.

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The Santa Cruz Wharf reopened on Friday after being damaged by Thursday's high surf.

Following inspections and damage assessments, the city determined that part of the wharf was safe to reopen to the public.

The end of the wharf, including the Dolphin Restaurant, restrooms, and the sea lion viewing area, experienced significant damage. That area was fenced off and closed to the public while crews work on repairs.

There is no estimated time on when the end of the wharf will fully reopen.

Watch CBS News

Boaters Assess Damage After Tsunami Strikes Santa Cruz Harbor

January 17, 2022 / 6:34 PM PST / CBS San Francisco

SANTA CRUZ (KPIX) -- Crews have been working to restore power and assess the damage at the Santa Cruz Small Craft Harbor, in the wake of Saturday's tsunami that struck in the early morning hours after a massive underground volcano erupted in the South Pacific.

Three pilings were damaged or destroyed, half a dozen electrical transformers were flooded with salt water, and the dredging vessel suffered significant damage. The timeline for repair is unknown, according to Harbormaster Blake Anderson.

The harbor received its first tsunami advisory around 4 a.m. on January 15, and staff began making preparations for the surge by shutting off power, deactivating the fueling station, and evacuating residents who live aboard their vessels.

The surge of water began flowing into the harbor around sunrise, jostling the dredger "Twin Lakes," tangling the multiple anchor lines and damaging the pipeline. Completion of repairs will be largely dependent on the availability of spare parts amidst the global supply chain troubles.

In 2011, a tsunami originating in Japan, caused $20 million dollars in damage to the same harbor.

The repair bill for the most recent tsunami repair "will not be close to that, but it will be significant," said Anderson. "We had replaced hundreds of piles in the harbor so I think having that newer infrastructure, having the better docks now, that saved us too," said Anderson.

Jason Steinberg, was among the evacuees awoken in the pre-dawn hours by the commotion of neighbors and Harbor Patrol, and witnessed the parking lot become inundated with floodwaters.

"And it happened within 5 minutes. It jumped 9 feet in five minutes," said Steinberg.

Tom McClaren's boat was tied to a slip directly adjacent to one of the destroyed pilings. The surge hoisted the dock and left it askew in the air, and snapped the metal piling in half. Remarkably, McClaren's boat was undamaged.

"I've been in the ocean my whole life. You never know what's going to happen. Respect Mother Nature, Mother Ocean," said McClaren.

David Snider, Tsunami Warning Coordinator at NOAA, explained how the tsunami traveled from Tonga and still caused damage inside the harbor 5400 miles away.

"And as those waves build up against each other or perhaps even break the other waves apart, the level of water is going to change in that immediate area. So perhaps that's what's happening in that harbor, in that enclosed space. Acting like a funnel and shaping that wave into something greater than it was when it came in, originally," said Snider.

Michael Poland, a geophysicist at USGS, has some relatively good news about the volcano's eruption.

"We have a good sense now of just how much sulfur dioxide came out as part of this eruption, based on satellite data. And it's not quite as much that was originally thought. So it's not the sort of volume of material, and gas, that would have a noticeable impact on the climate," said Poland.

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California storm prompts Santa Cruz evacuation warning

S anta Cruz County officials issued an evacuation warning Thursday morning for the coastal areas near Seacliff State Beach due to flooding .

“Please be prepared to leave should an evacuation order be issued,” Santa Cruz County officials wrote on X, formerly known as Twitter.

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The esplanade at Rio Del Mar Beach was inundated just before 8:30 a.m. Residents were told to avoid that area.

The evacuation warning was issued the same day a high surf warning was in effect until 3 a.m. Friday, with waves up to 40 feet possible expected to reach the San Francisco Bay Area coastline.

The National Weather Service warned people to stay away from waterside property, piers, jetties and rocks. “Never turn your back to the ocean!” the agency wrote on X.

A coastal flood warning was also issued Thursday morning for the areas of San Francisco, the North Bay coast, including Point Reyes National Seashore, the San Francisco Peninsula Coast, northern and southern Monterey Bay and counties along the Big Sur coast, according to the National Weather Service. The warning is in effect until 3 p.m. Thursday.

“Expect the worse impacts from inundation in the late morning around high tide,” meteorologists wrote in a coastal flooding warning. “The high surf will subside Friday before another large swell train arrives Saturday.”

Reach Jessica Flores: [email protected]; Twitter: @jesssmflores

Santa Cruz Harbor sees more than $6 million in…

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Santa cruz harbor sees more than $6 million in tsunami damage.

SANTA CRUZ – The Santa Cruz Port Commission on Tuesday declared an emergency for the Santa Cruz Harbor following Saturday’s tsunami.

The eruption of Hunga-Tonga-Hunga-Ha’apai, an underwater volcano roughly 40 miles north of the capital of the island nation of Tonga, caused tsunami advisories all throughout the Pacific. Waves from the blast slammed the American west coast with a strong undercurrent.

Videos shared on social media show high tide at Cowell Beach and flooding at the Santa Cruz Harbor. Santa Cruz Harbor staff shared the extent of the damage Tuesday.

“This emergency declaration will assist in streamlining the process in obtaining disaster recovery assistance with the state and Cal OES,” Port Director Holland Mac Laurie said.

The harbor estimates damages from Saturday’s tidal event to be as much as $6.5 million, according to Mac Laurie. For comparison, 2011’s tsunami event, caused by an 8.9-magnitude earthquake off the coast of Japan, caused $20 million in damage to the harbor.

Damages from Saturday’s event include utility infrastructure, damaged pilings and facilities such as restrooms and showers.

Waves from the tsunami flooded the restrooms and showers in the harbor with more than 3 feet of water, according to Port Commission Chairman Reed Geisreiter. Additionally, the waves knocked out the power throughout the harbor docks, a place where many people live aboard their moored boats.

Currently, the port commission is working to relocate those boats to powered slips while it continues to restore power to all docks, Mac Laurie said. So far, the commission has only heard from one live-aboard for that request, she added.

As of Tuesday afternoon, the port commission restored power to one dock that houses people that live on their boats and part of another, according to Harbormaster Blake Anderson. Three other docks harboring live aboard residents remain without power.

“A lot of live-aboards on (dock) J. That’s been a priority for us to get the power on back there,” Anderson said of hopefully restoring power to one of the docks by the end of the day Tuesday.

Crews need to continue to work toward drying the equipment before they can do the repairs necessary to restore power.

Long-term repairs of the power infrastructure were factored into damage estimates. Transformers in the harbor will likely have to be replaced since salt water was introduced to the equipment, which will deteriorate the quality of the transformers in the long run, Anderson noted.

Cost estimates also include embankment repairs on the eastside of the harbor and “unknown but expected” damage to the sea wall on the west side of the harbor.

Luckily, damage assessments found the harbor’s dock infrastructure is still structurally sound, Mac Laurie noted.

Additionally, the commission authorized Mac Laurie to enter into contracts to get necessary repairs done to harbor infrastructure. The commission originally planned to cap the contracts at $100,000 each, but elected to provide and additional $25,000 for each contract due to the anticipated costs of repairs, especially to utility infrastructure which is expected to exceed the original cap.

“We know we’re going to be running repair contracts that are over 100-grand so we might as well bump it up to 100 and a quarter,” Commissioner Stephen Reed said.

The effects of Saturday’s tsunami will also serve as important information as the city gears up to update its Local Hazard Mitigation and Climate Adaptation Plans, which assess the “impact and potential mitigations for combined natural hazards like tsunamis, flooding and sea level rise,” according to city Spokesperson Elizabeth Smith.

Planning updates are scheduled to take place before the end of 2022, she added.

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Weather | 18-foot waves pummel piers, chunk out sand and…

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Weather | apple sued in a landmark iphone monopoly lawsuit, weather | 18-foot waves pummel piers, chunk out sand and flood parking lots along southern california coast.

Big waves – some topping 18 feet in Los Angeles County – wreaked havoc on Friday, Jan. 6, as high tides and a winter swell continued to work over the Southern California coastline leading to beach erosion, pier closures, crumbled asphalt parking lots and boats torn from their docks.

In the South Bay, piers at three west-facing beaches remained closed Friday as waves more than 15 feet tall pummeled the structures.

In Seal Beach, high surf and wind pummeled the pier, and officials decided to “temporarily close it in an abundance of caution.” Part of the boat ramp used by oil platform workers was damaged. (Photo by Mark Rightmire, Orange County Register/SCNG)

High surf along west facing beaches in the southland had the Manhattan Beach Pier closed on Thursday January 5, 2022. (Photo by contributing photographer Chuck Bennett)

Waves crash over the Redondo Beach break wall near the King Harbor Yacht Club on Thursday, Jan. 5, 2023. A series of storm systems moved into the area, causing waves upwards of 12 feet high along the South Bay coast. (Photo by Maxwell at eMaximize.com)

A man treks out to the shore despite rain in Long Beach on Thursday, January 5, 2023. (Photo by Brittany Murray, Press-Telegram/SCNG)

Large waves hit the pilings of the Huntington Beach Pier early Friday morning, January 6, 2023 in Huntington Beach. The recent storm that brought rain, wind and snow to most of California, has also brought large, and in some areas, damaging surf. (Photo by Mark Rightmire, Orange County Register/SCNG)

Water from a large shorebreak wave makes its way nearly a hundred yards up on to the beach just south of the Huntington Beach Pier early Friday morning, January 6, 2023 in Huntington Beach. The recent storm that brought rain, wind and snow to most of California, has also brought large, and in some areas, damaging surf. (Photo by Mark Rightmire, Orange County Register/SCNG)

A beach goer looks on as a large shorebreak wave hits the beach just south of the Huntington Beach Pier early Friday morning, January 6, 2023 in Huntington Beach. The recent storm that brought rain, wind and snow to most of California, has also brought large, and in some areas, damaging surf. (Photo by Mark Rightmire, Orange County Register/SCNG)

Additionally, the high surf and tide surge swamped a block jetty at Cabrillo Beach in San Pedro, flooding and closing the nearby parking lot. Mounds of sand buried a bike path that runs from Torrance Beach to Avenue H in Redondo Beach and sea water flooded into a parking lot and public bathroom facility.

In King Harbor, massive waves overwhelmed a breakwater jetty and ate into the asphalt parking lot nearby.

“There were 15-foot-plus waves breaking directly onto the rocks at Redondo Harbor,” said Lifeguard Capt. A.J. Lester, a spokesman for Los Angeles County’s Fire and Lifeguard Division. “The parking lot is built on the rocks of the breakwater and the pressure caused the asphalt to break apart like it was an earthquake.”

The piers at Hermosa Beach, Manhattan Beach and Venice Beach were closed in an “abundance of caution” because of the strong west-northwest swell, which crashed surf over the top of the structures. It arrived Thursday along with the rainstorm and was expected to last through Friday, coinciding with a period of high tides.

The piers will remain closed until city crews assess the structures to ensure they haven’t been compromised, likely a day or two, said Capt. Kealiinohopono Barnes, also with the Los Angeles County division.

“It’s a question of stability after such a prolonged force from the waves,” he said. “The beaches there will remain open, but there is a water quality advisory all through Santa Monica Bay.”

In Seal Beach, high surf and wind pummeled the pier, and officials decided to “temporarily close it in an abundance of caution” and to allow for inspection, the city announced Friday. Part of the boat ramp used by oil platform workers was damaged. No timeline for reopening was given.

Crews from the Orange County Fire Authority and Seal Beach Public Work’s Department built sand berms to reinforce the beach. OCFA heavy equipment crews were also busy Friday digging and draining water from the north side of the pier to prevent seawater from entering any structures and homes.

Surf off Manhattan Beach at El Porto hit as high as 18 feet, though other areas of county shore were more manageable.

“We’ve had considerable erosion,” Barnes said of the waves that ate at the sand. “We’ve lost so much in a short timeframe.”

In Laguna Beach, high waves tore down parts of a sea wall at a home in North Laguna, flooded the coastal side of Coast Highway and Broadway, damaged the foundation of a lifeguard tower at Oak Street leaving it tilting toward the surf zone and tore off railing and staircase steps at Woods and Moss beaches.

Aliso Beach’s parking lot was temporarily shut Friday after flooding, but its east side was opened later in the day. The west side of the lot remained closed while crews continue to clear debris. Officials expected work to continue Saturday.

In Capistrano Beach, the parking lot was also closed most of Friday, but reopened by the end of the day.

Lifeguards caution that though the waves might look tempting for surfers, those who go out

should be sure of their abilities. Especially in the next few days, as the surf declines, the water may appear more welcoming, but the threat of rip currents will be greater – especially along the South Bay beaches where the sea floor has gotten carved up more from all the turbulence and wave action.

“That’s when we see a lot of rescues, because the rip currents get really strong and people get caught in them,” Barnes said.

Water quality is also a concern after rain storms, which can wash inland runoff with pollutants and debris to the ocean. Officials typically advise staying out of the water for 72 hours after a storm. On Friday, Orange County health officials were recommending staying out of the water until at least Monday.

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Map Showing Seacliff Response to Climatic and Seismic Events, Seabright Beach, Santa Cruz County, California

Introduction

The coastal cliffs along much of the central California coast are actively retreating. Large storms and periodic earthquakes are responsible for most of the documented sea cliff slope failures. Long-term average erosion rates calculated for this section of coast do not provide the spatial or temporal data resolution necessary to identify the processes responsible for retreat of the sea cliffs where episodic retreat threatens homes and community infrastructure. Research suggests that more erosion occurs along the California coast over a short time scale, during periods of severe storms or seismic activity, than occurs during decades of normal weather or seismic quiescence.

This is the third map in a series of maps prepared to document the processes of short-term sea cliff retreat through the identification of slope failure styles, spatial variability of failures, and temporal variation in retreat amounts in an area that has been identified as an erosion hotspot. This map presents sea cliff failure and retreat data from the Seabright Beach section, California, which is located on the east side of Santa Cruz along the northern Monterey Bay coast. The data presented in this map series provide high-resolution spatial and temporal information on the location, amount, and processes of sea cliff retreat in Santa Cruz, California. These data show the response of the sea cliffs to both large magnitude earthquakes and severe climatic events such as El Ni?os; this information may prove useful in predicting the future response of the cliffs to events of similar magnitude. The map data can also be incorporated into Global Information System (GIS) for use by researchers and community planners. During this study we developed a method for investigating short-term processes of sea cliff evolution using rectified photographic stereo models. This method allows us to document the linear extent of cliff failures, the spatial and temporal relationship between failures, and the type or style of slope failure.

Seabright Beach extends 0.9 km from San Lorenzo Point on the west to the Santa Cruz Yacht Harbor on the east. The cliffs at Seabright Beach are completely protected from wave attack by a wide beach. The protective beach is a relatively recent feature that formed after the emplacement of the Santa Cruz Yacht Harbor jetty in 1963-1964. Prior to the completion of the jetty, the cliffs at Seabright Beach were subject to daily wave attack. The data in this study are post-jetty construction; therefore, the sea cliff failures and cliff retreat are the result of nonmarine processes (rainfall, groundwater and seismic shaking). The 8 to 15 m high cliffs at Seabright Beach are composed of the Miocene to Pliocene Purisima Formation, which is overlain by unconsolidated Pleistocene terrace deposits. The relative thickness of these units varies along the length of the cliff. At the west end of Seabright Beach, including San Lorenzo Point, nearly the entire cliff section is composed of Purisima Formation and is capped by less than 2 m of terrace deposits. In this exposure, the Purisima Formation is a moderately weathered, moderately indurated massive sandstone. The height of the cliffs and the thickness of the Purisima Formation decrease to the east. In the cliffs immediately adjacent to the harbor, the entire exposure is composed of terrace deposits. Toe-slope debris and wind-blown sand form a nearly continuous fan along the cliff base that obscure the lower portion of the cliff.

This study documents the impacts of earthquakes and large storms to the sea cliffs in the Seabright Beach section. The first event is the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake, a M7.1 earthquake that caused widespread damage to the area stretching from Santa Cruz to the San Francisco Bay. The epicenter of the earthquake was located in the Santa Cruz Mountains, approximately 9 km inland from the coast. Extensive block and debris falls, induced by the seismic shaking, occ

Citation Information

Related content, cheryl hapke, ph.d. (former employee), research coastal geologist, bruce richmond (former employee), research geologist.

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Crime & Safety

Multiple boats catch fire at santa cruz yacht harbor, breaking: three boats sustained serious damage and one boat sank., bay city news , news partner.

SANTA CRUZ, CA — A fire that broke out Tuesday morning at the Santa Cruz Yacht Harbor sunk one boat and caused serious damage to three more, according to officials with the Santa Cruz Fire Department. At 5:56 a.m., 911 dispatchers received multiple calls about a vessel on fire at the harbor located at 601 Brommer St.

When fire crews arrived at the "U" dock in the upper harbor, they found multiple boats on fire, and the blaze beginning to spread to adjacent boats. People who were inside neighboring boats at the dock were evacuated.

According to fire officials, crews made an aggressive attack to prevent the fire from spreading. Within 25 minutes of arrival, firefighters had the blaze under control.

Find out what's happening in Santa Cruz with free, real-time updates from Patch.

Three boats sustained serious damage and one boat sank. Crews from multiple agencies worked to overhaul the boats in a manner that protected the surrounding environment, fire officials said.

Representatives from the American Red Cross arrived to assist two displaced boat dwellers, but they declined assistance. The cause of the fire is under investigation, fire officials said.

By Bay City News

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Prior to transiting the entrance, mariners are advised to check tide and weather conditions, view the most recent entrance sounding, and know what your vessel draws. Entrance soundings are updated weekly and posted below.

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