LOS ANGELES, Nov. 8 (UPI) -- Soaking rains in California continued into the afternoon Friday while residents of the mountains to the east braced for the possibility of more than a foot of snow produced by the first major winter storm of the season.
Commuters from Seattle south to San Diego experienced a slow and wet drive to work while, presumably, some residents of the San Francisco Bay Area unwittingly overslept due to scattered early-morning power outages.
"It was pretty widespread," Brian Swanson, a spokesman for Pacific Gas & Electric Co., told United Press International. "The coastal areas were the hardest hit. There were winds up to 70 miles per hour."
An estimated 249,000 customers were still without power at midday in PG&E's service area, which stretches from the Oregon state line south to Bakersfield, Calif.
Since the storm began Thursday, some 1.2 million PG&E customers were without power at some point.
Swanson said 1,056 repair workers were in the field "running from one outage to the next."
Flights at San Francisco International Airport were delayed up to two hours Friday, and overnight winds topping 50 miles per hour blew the roof off a cargo building at the airport.
A cell of heavy rain swept through the Bay Area early Friday and made a beeline for the Sierra and the mountain states to the east where winter storm watches and warnings were in effect through the weekend.
"Periods of rain with snow in the mountains will continue at least through Saturday," the National Weather Service announced Friday. "Nearly continuous precipitation can be expected over the Sierra Nevada and winter storm warnings continue."
Heavy surf advisories were in effect along the entire coast with gale warnings posted off Washington and Oregon.
Blustery winds were strong enough to close the Richmond Bay Bridge during the pre-dawn hours because of debris blowing around the traffic lane.
The Coast Guard said on Friday that a 700-foot dry-dock barge broke loose from Pier 70 in San Francisco and had to be corralled by a trio of tugboats before it crashed into the bridge's supports. Winds up to 20 knots were buffeting the port of Oakland while strong currents churned up the northern half of San Francisco Bay.
"The Coast Guard worked closely with the California Department of Transportation and the California Highway Patrol to ensure public safety on the Bay Bridge," the Coast Guard said in a release. "The tug boats Brynn Foss and Andrew Foss ... and the Sharon Brusco maneuvered the drifting barge until it ran aground into the south end of Yerba Buena Island."
In southern California, the storm brought the first significant rain to the Los Angeles area since late last January and caused the usual spate of traffic accidents, street flooding and small mudslides.
Weather was believed to have played a role in the crash of a small plane in Anaheim, Calif. that killed both occupants.
Also, a bus returning from a Temecula, Calif. casino trip skidded and overturned on a wet highway in Corona at around 1 a.m. PST, causing some three dozen injuries, none of which was considered life-threatening.
