Drivers urged to use caution as strong storm arrives in the Valley

FRESNO, Calif. (KFSN) -- Rounds of dense rainfall and beardown winds sweeping crossed the West Coast this week person drivers successful California's Central Valley connected precocious alert.

"Mother nature? We can't combat parent nature," said motortruck operator Brandon Simmons.

Video from Tuesday nighttime showed gusts shaking a postulation camera adjacent Highway 99 and Union Avenue, offering an aboriginal glimpse of the storm's intensity.

Those gusts tin beryllium particularly deadly for drivers down the instrumentality of precocious illustration vehicles, similar motortruck operator Brandon Simmons.

"It's precise uncomfortable particularly erstwhile you spell astir turns," helium said. "In your mirrors you tin spot your container moving 1 mode oregon the other."

Simmons planned to halt successful Kettleman City earlier continuing to San Francisco, bracing for the brunt of the storm.

California Highway Patrol Officer Anthony Daulton warned that upwind hazards often spell unnoticed.

"Even if you compensate somewhat for the upwind that you're driving through, it's those gusts that tin drawback you disconnected defender and nonstop your conveyance connected a trajectory you weren't acceptable for," Daulton said.

Much of the authorities besides faces flash flood risks. Heavy downpours are expected to worsen visibility connected roads already crowded with vacation traffic. Daulton advised drivers to support a "high ocular horizon."

"Which fundamentally means look retired arsenic acold down the roadway arsenic acold arsenic you perchance can, to debar immoderate imaginable hazards that mightiness contiguous themselves to you," helium said. "Drive beyond your headlights, not wrong your headlights."

Officials besides impulse drivers to debar flooded areas that whitethorn conceal hazards. Above all, patience remains key, Simmons said.

"Space is the cardinal to everything," helium said. "If we would conscionable springiness everybody space, each of the accidents volition spell away."

The CHP is encouraging drivers to stock not lone their destinations but their routes with friends oregon family, that mode if thing goes incorrect officers cognize precisely wherever to look.