SAN FRANCISCO, Jan. 4 (Xinhua) -- A heavy winter storm hit the U.S. San Francisco Bay Area with strong winds and downpours throughout Wednesday, killing at least two people and injuring several others, officials said.
A 19-year-old woman died in Fairfield in the early hours of the storm when her car crashed into a utility pole. In the town of Occidental, Sonoma County, a baby died when winds knocked a tree into a mobile home in the afternoon. The other three people in the house were injured.
Nearly 100,000 customers in the Bay Area lost power, according to Pacific Gas and Electric Company.
California issued a State of Emergency on Wednesday morning to support the response to the storm and recovery efforts across the state.
Nancy Ward, director of the governor's office of emergency services, said that California is facing "one of the most challenging and impactful storms to touch down in California in the past five years."
At a press conference Wednesday, San Francisco Mayor London Breed advised residents to hunker down for the night and stay off the roads.
"With the ground so saturated, we're going to see more trees down on roadways, more power outages, and we're still primed for flooding and more damage because there's more rain and wind coming," Roger Gass, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service was quoted as saying in a report by The San Francisco Chronicle.
The National Weather Service Bay Area office issued a flood watch for Tuesday night through Thursday morning for the entire San Francisco Bay Area, and a high wind warning is also in effect for the region till Thursday.
Last Saturday, at least one person was killed in the Bay Area during a historic weekend storm.
