First Storm of Fall 2009 HIts San Francisco

The first of the Fall storms has hit San Francisco and the Bay Area and has been longer-lasting than forecast, affecting travellers and causing damage around the city.

Winds have been gusting up to 70 mph over the Golden Gate Bridge, ferry boats and cruise ships that sail around the Bay have been cancelled, Fleet Week ship visits to the USS Green Bay - it could be renamed the Gray Bay - were cancelled. There have been power outtages, flooding around the roads and trees down.

As a result of the storm, the USS Green Bay may open tomorrow to visitors instead.

The Development Manager for the Blue and Gold Fleet at Pier 39, that carries both visitors and commuters around the bay, said that about 30 - 35 per cent of trips had been cancelled.

'First and foremost, we are keeping the safety of our customers in mind,' said Mr Dennis Swayne. The most important weather problem today had been the gusting winds, he said.

Ferry companies in the bay, including Bay Link and the Alameda Oakland Ferry, with which the Blue and Gold Fleet is associated, and the Golden Gate Ferry, had been taking direction from the Coast Guards.

'It's been just a little too rocky and a little too rough. It is not a fun day,' he said. 'Even on a big, big, big boat that weighs a lot of tons, you would feel it out there today.'

At the time of speaking to Mr Swayne, at 4 pm, he was waiting on the weather to know if the crucial 6.30 pm commuter ferry would be able to sail. But from what he had heard, he said, many commuters had left the city early and travelled back by other means.

A spokesman for the Golden Gate Bridge said that winds had gusted up to 70 mph, but that the bridge had remained open. Drivers had driven carefully and slowly, and there had not been any serious problems.

The spokesman said that the wind had blown in shorts gusts rather than at a steady speed and that gusts like that were 'not unheard of at this time of year.'

Closure of the bridge depends not solely on the power of the wind but its direction, he said. A north-south wind that hits it broadside is much more of a problem than an east-west flow, like today, that runs alongside it.

The road along the Embarcadero had also flooded.

The US Navy's newest amphibious landing craft, an aircraft carrier that supports the Marines on operations, closed completely to visitors today. The few visitors that went along on the final day of Fleet Week, were unable to have a tour of the ship.

However, an officer at the gate this afternoon said that it was possible that the ship's visiting hours would be extended and that it would be open tomorrow, at least in the morning, for visitors. The opening wasn't guaranteed as they were awaiting orders, he said.

At the time of posting this blog, it had not been possible to get a comment from the Fleet Week organization.

Power outtages affected the city, including part of the County Hospital on Potrero Hill. At Mission Creek by lunchtime the Mission Bay Parks department had spotted a tree that had nearly blown over. They secured it with a rope and poles - pics show tree, and birds taking refuge on the bank of the creek

On the NBC11 news tonight there were pictures of trees down and roads flooded around the city.

Residents woke up to high winds and heavy rain early this morning, and with an NBC report of 30 mph gusts over the Golden Gate Bridge and a fall of 3"-5" rain.

Early forecasts that the rain and heavy winds would subside by 2pm proved not to be the case. There was a lull in the city around mid-morning but by 12 pm the high winds and torrential rain were back with a vengeance and were still continuing at 4pm.

But not everyone was affected by the weather! At Pier 39 this afternoon - pic at top shows a few visitors looking over to a rain-shrouded Alcatraz - quite a few of the sea lions were out swimming in the dock and the bay.

'They're not bothered by the weather!' said Sue Muzzin, Director of Public Relations & Advertising for Pier 39.

The San Francisco Chronicle reported it to be 'the worst October storm the Bay Area has experienced since 1962, when terrible weather famously disrupted the World Series between the Giants and the New York Yankees.'

The storm has produced record one-day falls for October of 2.48 inches in Downtown San Francisco, and 2.64 inches at SFO.

The Green Bay slipped quietly out of the Bay mid-morning the following day without taking any more visitors on board.

Blue Angels Pilots Sign Autographs

Though yesterday's Blue Angels' air display was cancelled, that did not stop several of the pilots and support team from later meeting fans to sign autographs.

People queued at Pier 39, some for nearly an hour in the fog-chilled evening air.

The Blue Angels spent from 7.15 - 7.45 pm at Pier 39, the team including seven pilots at the beginning of the row, and then other support crew including a doctor and mechanic.

Ten-year-old Jesse was determined to collect as many autographs as he could. He emerged with a trophy of all seven pilots' autographs inscribed on his sweatshirt!

'They're cool!' he said.

'They're awesome!' said his nine-year-old sister, Emily. 'I think they should keep up the good work.'

The Blue Angels have a second show scheduled as part of Fleet Week, fog permitting, this afternoon at 3 - 4 pm. However, the Bay Area family, with mum, Deborah, and dad, Eric, were not able to return today to see the second show, but even without the Blue Angels' display, had still enjoyed the day.

Twelve-year-old Alex said, 'I think they're awesome. that they do cool tricks!'

He was 'a little bit disappointed' not to have seen the Blue Angels that afternoon but had enjoyed the rest of the airshow.

What does he want to do when he is older?

'Be in the military,' he said. He was there with mum, Vicky, and dad, Elio.
'We're coming back

tomorrow,' said mum, Vicky. In fact, the Bay Area family were facing a very full day. They will also be participating in the 139th Italian Heritage Parade at Fisherman's Wharf, the city's oldest civic event, as Elio is of Italian descent and the first of his family to be born here.

Other entertainment at Pier 39 included a great Navy rock band, and what was titled as 'one man's tribute to the Blue Angels' - a Corvette C6 in Blue Angels artwork.

US Navy Fighter Pilot in Fleet Week Speaks of Afghanistan Flights

Landing on a carrier ship at night after a mission in Afghanistan is the most difficult part of a flight operation, said US Navy fighter pilot Lieutenant Erik Kenny.

He was on board the San Francisco Belle dinner cruise ship yesterday with two other pilots as part of Fleet Week, the city's annual naval extravaganza. The pilots were there to mingle with the 1,000 passengers who had paid for a champagne lunch and the opportunity to watch the Blue Angels air show from out in the bay.

Lt Kenny was the narrator for the show - although it was cancelled after just one fly-past because of fog and low cloud - and was accompanied by his wife, Maria, and three-year-old twin daughters, Sophie and Lucy.

As a navy pilot, he has seven-and-a-half-years experience and flies the F-18 Hornets, similar to those of the Blue Angels. He has also seen two deployments in Afghanistan where the missions are long and arduous.

'On deployment, the missions that we do are six hours long.We fly in over Pakistan,' he said. Once in the country, the pilots are there for three to four hours.

'That flight from the carrier to Afghanistan is like flying from Seattle to San Diego,' he said. 'After we've been there for four hours, we have to come back and land on the ship at night and that is the hardest thing to do.

'It takes us two-and-a-half-years to learn how to do that and it's a continual learning process, no-one's ever perfect at it.'

Of Afghanistan, he said, 'It's what we have trained for for our entire career, to help in whatever mission the military has set for us.'

The highlight, he said, is that 'we get to talk to the guys on the ground when we are flying, we get to talk to them on the radio. Sometimes they just want us to help them out, check things out.'

Lt Kenny sums up the value of his work simply as this: 'Guys are getting shot at, hopefully we can save some American and Coalition Forces' lives.'

As we were speaking, various passengers came up to shake his hand and thank him for his courage and all that he was doing for the country.

His wife, Maria, said, 'I'm in awe of him. I ask him every day, "how do you do that?!"

'What he does is truly unbelievable. I'm very proud of him.'

Blue Angels Air Show, Fleet Week 2009, Cancelled!

Cancelled! To the great disappointment of thousands of spectators, fog rolled slowly over the Golden Gate Bridge moments after the start of the first of the Blue Angels' shows yesterday for Fleet Week 2009.

Out in the bay, from the top deck of the San Francisco Belle there was one stunning fly past of the four-jet diamond formation. In breathtaking fashion, the Blue Angels flew with wings interlocking and seemingly so close that you felt you could almost reach up and touch them.

'Every year I never cease to be amazed!' said Joanne, from the Bay Area, who was sipping champagne with Kyle from Seattle. Though unfortunately that turned out to be the end of her amazement.

The Hornblower Cruise was offering champagne, a buffet lunch and the opportunity to meet three US Navy pilots. Lt Erik Kenny - pictured being introduced - narrated from the bridge for the show.

For a few moments after the Blue Angels' brief appearance, he stood on the decking of the bridge and like everyone else on the main deck below, gazed up at empty skies.

'They did fly in the clouds earlier, it's not where you want to be,' Lt Kenny said to a member of the public. And then came the news that the show was cancelled.

From where he stood near the bridge of the ship, he said the horizontal visibility was starting to change and the Blue Angels 'had to have a perfect environment.'

The wind was also starting to pick up but this was not a factor. 'They can adjust their manoeuvers for the wind but not for visibility,' he said.

Lt Kenny pointed to the limiting features of the bay, bounded by the Golden Gate Bridge to the north and, to the south, Yerba Buena Island, the Bay Bridge and the Oakland Hills. 'They can't really shift the show that much,' he explained.

Before the sole appearance of the Blue Angels, their support cargo plane, a C-130 nicknamed Fat Albert, went over the ship. Fat Albert, named after a children's cartoon and manned by the Marine Corps, said 'Hi!' with a wiggle of wings and marked the end of the earlier part of the airshow.

By going on the Blue Angels lunch cruise, the 1,000 passengers opted to miss the first part of the show, much of which is aerobatics. Included in the aerobatic teams were Sean D Tucker, one of the Living Legends in Aviation with his Team Oracle, and two female pilots, Chevron's Julie Clark, a retired Northwest Airlines captain, and 25-year-old Melissa Pemberton whose Melissa Aerobatics is based in San Francisco.

Also scheduled were a U.S. F-16 Viper West, the United States Air Force’s newest fighter aircraft, the F-22A Raptor and the U.S. Coast Guard Helicopter.

As the San Francisco Belle positioned herself south of Alcatraz to wait for the Blue Angels, there was a fly over of the Patriot Jets demonstration team, noted for a signature 'Tail Slide' and for being the only jet demo team to have their aircraft sliding tail first towards the ground. There was a distant glimpse of a stunt plane and sight of a United Airways jumbo circling the bay, and that was that.

For Elaine, a San Franciscan living in Sacramento who has just celebrated her 69th birthday, this was her first visit to Fleet Week. As she stood on deck before the start of the show, she was as enthusiastic about the bay as much as the anticipated show. Which turned out to be a very good thing!

'I just love to be out on the bay, just to see this view and this air and this water,' she said. 'My mother worked at the Ferry Building in the 1930s and she talked about living here.'

As news of the cancelled show reached people, Charles quipped to his wife, Betty, 'Those guys fly closer together than I want to walk!'

The couple, from Stockton, California, are volunteer musical entertainers in convalescent hospitals and retirement homes, and were not going to let the non-appearance of the Angels spoil their day.

'We came for the trip,' they said.

Overhead, the sky was clear but last night on Kron4 News, the Commander for the Blue Angels said that he had made the decision to cancel the show based on visibility in the bay and low cloud cover around the city's skyscrapers.

Safety was more important than entertainment, he said. A minimum of three nautical miles is needed, according to the Blue Angels' website.

They also need a minimum cloud ceiling of 1,500 ft for what they call a 'flat' show. For a 'low' show with rolling maneouvers they need 3,500 ft and for a 'high' show, 8,000 ft. The highest manoeuvers are vertical rolls that can be performed up to 15,000 ft, and the lowest and fastest are the 700 mph Sneak Passes at a ground-hugging, sea-skimming 50 ft.

In combat conditions, the Hornets can reach speeds just under Mach 2, almost twice the speed of sound or about 1,400 mph, and climb at 30,000 feet per minute.

For the show, they had been intending to meld some of the celebrated features of San Francisco into their routine by buzzing Alcatraz, flying through the Golden Gate Bridge and whizzing around Coit Tower.

The Angels, in the blue and gold colours of the US Navy, have been flying the F/A-18 Hornet for 23 years. Formed in 1946, their name comes from that of a famous New York nightclub that was spotted by a team member in the New Yorker Magazine.

The pilots' average age is 33 years, and while they serve a two-year tour with the team are away from home for much of the year.

This season they are scheduled to fly 69 air shows at 35 air show sites in the US. Last season, 13 million people watched them perform, and in total their shows have been watched by over 455 million people. They also perform on the ground, visiting more than 50,000 people in schools and hospitals.

Fog and cloud permitting, the second of the airshows is due 12.30 - 3 pm and the Blue Angels are due to perform from 3- 4 pm.

Record Number of Sea Lions at Pier 39

They are a mass of honking, brown, wriggly bodies that are one of the most popular tourist attractions in San Francisco. And there's never been more of them.

At the latest count, San Francisco's famous sea lion colony at Pier 39 has grown to a record 1,585. Six new sea lion floats, originally

intended as replacements, have just been put in the dock to join the approximate 34 floats that were already there.

Even then, almost every square inch of pontoon was covered yesterday afternoon. The seals jostled, tussled and flopped over each other amusing visitors, their hoarse barks competing with the roar of the Blue Angels on a practice for one of the city's flagship events, Fleet Week.

Harbor Master, Sheila Chandor, describes the increased herd size as an 'anomaly.'

'Usually during this time of the year, we typically have only a few smaller sea lions on the docks, as the larger males head south to mate,' she says.

The Marine Mammal Center who help care for the animals are also scratching their heads in puzzlement and knuckling down to some research. One answer could be the food supply, especially anchovies.

'Earlier this year, we saw a record number of yearling sea lions strand as a result of an abrupt change in the classic upwelling pattern - the replacement of warm surface water by cold water from ocean depths - which caused their food sources to shift further off shore,' says Jeff Boehm, Executive Director.

'Now, the older sea lions that are out there are seeking food wherever they can find it, and the current run of anchovies has a lot of them hanging out in some areas in greater numbers than we’ve grown used to.'

The sea lions began to gather in K-dock in January 1990, just months after the October 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake, for which 20th Anniversary celebrations are due to start in the city on Tuesday.

'These boisterous barking pinnipeds numbered from 10 to 50, but due to a plentiful herring supply, available dock space and a protective environment, the population grew to more than 300 within a couple of months. The Pier 39 sea lions have since become an international sensation,' says the Harbor Master.

Sue Muzzin, Director of Public Relations & Advertising for Pier 39 and a former San Franciscan journalist with Newstalk Radio, remembers their arrival.

'They just took to San Francisco,' she said. The Pier weren't certain how to deal with them but local people kept calling to say 'don't get rid of them!' So the Harbor Master moved boats to the other side of the dock and Pier 39 created an environment for them.

Today, Sue says, they are a 'wonderfully special entity.'

With her office door open, she can hear them barking, and every day sees people looking at them, laughing and taking photos.

The sea lions are not only lovable, they are an economic boom. 'The merchants love them,' said Sue, not only for themselves but because they bring in many tourists. When business in the city suffered terribly as a result of the Loma Prieta earthquake, the sea lions turned Pier 39 into a spot of prosperity.

'They were such a positive part of a depressing story,' she said.

This year, as a result of the credit crunch, Pier 39 is having a 'softer' year financially, but the attraction of the sea lions is undiminished. There is a good number of tourists, they are simply not spending so much.

Even many locals join the free Local Advantage Club with savings on attractions and shops, and make three to five trips a year there.

Linda, on holiday with her husband and twin children from Central Scotland, is a perfect example of a sea lions fan. She has been coming to the city since 1991 and is now bringing her children.

'I just find it wonderful to come down here and see so many. It makes you wonder how it all started. What is the thing that makes them stay here?' she said.

'Every time I come to San Francisco, I come here. I think they're an iconic feature. It's been fascinating here today,' she added, referring to the sea lions and the airshow practice earlier when the Blue Angels had roared over their heads at Ghiradelli Square.

Five-year-old twins Alastair and Fiona were equally fascinated by the sea lions.

'They're funny!' said Fiona.

'They're very poo-ey!' said Alastair!

For more info on the sea lions and to watch a live webcam: www.pier39.com