Another 70 private tow and 16 heavy-duty trucks were hired, as is common during large storms.
Today, after large storms track across the Pacific, swelling numbers of surfers and photographers descend here to ride and document every wave.
A series of large storms would increase the budget deficit and start a new debate over whether to raise taxes, cut programs, or both.
The first recognisably modern weather maps appeared in the early 19th century, when proto-meteorologists stitched together eyewitness accounts of large storms to construct maps after the event.
Airplanes flying through large storms at altitudes of about 10,000 metres (33,000 feet) have measured updrafts exceeding 30 metres (98 feet) per second.
The average thunderstorm produces about 2,000 metric tons (220,000 short tons) of rain, but large storms can produce 10 times more rainfall.
"We're getting these very strange, very large storms with very low central pressures that don't have that much wind at the surface".
Since 1979, nearly a dozen hurricanes and large storms have rolled in and knocked down houses, chewed up sewers and water pipes and hurled sand onto the roads.
Wide beaches, preferably with dunes and vegetation, protect buildings and roads by serving as buffers to waves churned up by large storms.
In some cases it is not the large storms that are sapping resources, but the many small ones that just coat the road, making them too slick for drivers.
Last weekend, as Hurricane Irma was bearing down on Florida, the photographer Bryan Anselm, who has documented the aftermath of several large storms, was on one of the last flights into Tampa.
