Locals says storms like this haven’t happened for years. Photo: Santa Cruz County
You know your town really got jacked up by a storm when the President shows up. And the governor (twice). At approximately 2 P.M. on January 19, 2023, the Air Force One helicopter carrying President Biden, escorted by three V-22 Osprey tiltrotor attack choppers, touched down at the sleepy Watsonville Airport in southern Santa Cruz County. From there the presidential motorcade, including a fortified limousine dubbed “The Beast,” and a special ambulance driven all the way out from D.C., rolled through to see our town. Five days earlier, Biden had declared Santa Cruz County a “major disaster area.”
The damage was done by what one media maven called a “parade” of powerful storms that began in late December and crescendoed with the “Bomb Cyclone” storm and swell on January 5. At times, rain fell on the area at a rate of over one inch per-hour. High tides and swell measuring 22 feet, 18 seconds from a rare, due westerly angle of 275 degrees turned the usual right hook of winter storm surges into a deadly upper cut. Concrete wheel stops, pier pilings, telephone poles, logs and stumps and all manner of other debris swirled around in the shorebreaks and were scattershot like shrapnel at shoreline homes and businesses. Boulders as big as beachballs flew over the breakwater rocks. While Maverick’s charger Zach Wormhoudt was on walkabout checking the surf along West Cliff Drive, a wave heaved a rock the size of an anvil past the bike path and through the windshield of his truck.
Coastal flooding and a giant west swell only exacerbated the destruction. Photo: Santa Cruz County
“One minute you’re checking the waves, and the next minute they’re checking you,” Zach wrote on his Instagram.
With snipers on nearby rooftops, the President and California Governor Gavin Newsom surveyed the extensive damage sustained by Surf City North’s iconic infrastructure, including the Seacliff State Park and Capitola Piers, the Cement Ship, and Capitola Esplanade. The Seacliff Pier lost approximately half its length, the Capitola Pier, a section about 30 feet across. Picnic pergolas at Seacliff State Beach were flattened, or smashed and the bits spread out like pick-up sticks. Iron railings along seaside pathways were bent or broken or gone completely. Asphalt was peeled off roads. West Cliff Drive lost a chunk the size of a house in the shape of a great white shark bite.
“I have seen flooding here before, but this is the worst damage I’ve seen by far,” said Kevin Painchaud, a photographer for Lookout Local Santa Cruz known for his award-winning coverage of the CZU Lightning Complex fires that ravaged the Santa Cruz Mountains in 2020.
Down in Aptos in south Santa Cruz County, a beach house rental known as the Hawley House was lifted off its foundation, carried about 30 feet inland and plopped down again, more or less intact. Though it was deemed uninhabitable and had to be demolished. A second vacation rental on the same row that also floated off its footings is reportedly salvageable.
Sue Lane of Cheshire Realty, a manager of vacation homes in Aptos, said this is the worst she has seen as well. “We’ve got 10-foot piles of sand blocking Beach Drive,” she said. “We don’t know when we can rent again because of the road, and the County has no idea when they’ll be able to fix it.”
Lane and many anxious property owners are hopeful that the road will be cleared in time for spring break.
It was the waterfront restaurants and bars of the Capitola Esplanade that fared the worst. After the Bomb Cyclone, popular watering holes for tourists and locals alike such as Zelda’s, The Pacific Grill, The Sand Bar and others looked like they’d suffered a car bomb blast.
Tragically, 19 deaths have been attributed to the barrage of storms between late December 2022 and mid January 2023.
According to Santa Cruz County officials, the cost of repairs to public infrastructure related to those storms is expected to run upwards of $76 million, $26 million of which will be required to fix Capitola alone. And that doesn’t account for damage to private properties.
Of course, this wasn’t the first time that Santa Cruz has taken such a hit. Most notably, a single cyclone spinning off the Pacific Ocean walloped the famous surf hub during the winter of 1982-1983. That one storm caused a landslide in the Santa Cruz Mountain community of Love Creek that measured 2,000 feet wide, 820 feet long, and 33 feet thick, destroying 30 homes and killing 10 people.
It’s safe to say that 100 percent of Santa Cruz residents are ready for weather like this. Photo: Dan Hadar//Unsplash
It’s ironic that much of the damage to homes, roads, piers, etc. in Santa Cruz was inflicted by the very thing it is known and loved for: waves. Storms like the Bomb Cyclone of 2023, and the swell that came with it, are expected to occur with more frequency due to climate change. It makes one wonder what, if anything, can be done to prevent such devastation going forward.
“We need to reimagine what coastal public use areas like West Cliff Drive will look like in the future,” says David Revell, a coastal geomorphology expert. His firm, Integral Consulting, assists municipalities in managing sea level rise associated with climate change. “That swell we had on January 5 was the largest long-interval, due-west swell on record. Sea level rise alone doesn’t do much damage but when combined with swells and storms like what we just had, this is what happens.”
Anti-erosion barriers designed and implemented by Revell survived even the Bomb Cyclone, saving public structures and showed a possible way forward.
East Cliff Drive in Santa Cruz has already been reduced to one lane due to erosion. After January’s destruction, a group called “Save West Cliff” coalesced to insure the local community has a voice in how valuable but vulnerable coastal resource areas like the East and West Cliff Drive corridors are managed by the municipality. Surf community luminaries participating in the grass roots movement include Bob Pearson of Pearson Arrow Surfboards, Mavs surfer Sarah Gerhardt, Santa Cruz Waves magazine Publisher Tyler Fox, Bud Miller and family, Darryl “Flea” Virostko, Anthony Ruffo and more.
That’s a lineup capable of intimidating even a Bomb Cyclone from doing damage again in Santa Cruz anytime soon.
