SAN FRANCISCO -- Strong storm winds blew a big rig over onto a car on the Richmond-San Rafael Bridge Tuesday afternoon, but the lucky driver and his daughter managed to escape injury.

The CHP said the big rig overturned onto the car at about mid-span on the just before 3 p.m. The east bound lanes were completely shut down after the accident, but were reopened by about 5:30 after authorities cleared debris from the trailer.

CHP Sgt. Trent Cross said that CHP typically receives 1,000 calls on a day without precipitation, but on Tuesday had gotten upwards of 3,000 service calls due to complications on roadways from the storm.

The driver told KTVU that when he saw the rig start to tip over, he was able to speed up so only the back of his car was hit.

The truck driver was also uninjured.

Eastbound traffic is being turned around back onto Sir Francis Drake Boulevard.

There is still no word yet on when those lanes will reopen.

Adding to the Bay Area’s traffic woes from the storm, the middle bore of the Caldecott Tunnel was closed for emergency repairs, snarling eastbound traffic on state Highway 24 Tuesday night.

The bore of the Caldecott Tunnel reopened shortly before 8 p.m. Tuesday night, but delays caused by the closure were expected to keep traffic heavy much later than normal.

A Sig-alert was issued for the highway at 6:14 p.m. and canceled at 7:50 p.m., CHP Officer Peter Van Eckhardt said.

He said crews had to complete repairs in the middle bore of the tunnel, which connects Oakland to Orinda, after a crash caused some property damage to the bore earlier Tuesday.

Traffic in the area remained heavy as of about 8 p.m., Van Eckhardt said.

Meanwhile, pounding rains forced officials in the Santa Cruz Mountains to issue a mandatory evacuation order for about 60 homes along Swanton Road -- the area of last summer's Lockheed Fire, as a massive storm continued pummeling the Bay Area Thursday evening.

Santa Cruz County spokeswoman Dinah Phillips said residents were alerted of the evacuation via a reverse-911 call at about 8:30 a.m.

A Red Cross reception center has been set up at the Davenport Resource Center, located at 100 Church St. in Davenport.

Some roads in the Santa Cruz Mountains are blocked due to flooding. A full list of closures can be found online at www.sccroadclosure.org.

Schools in San Lorenzo Valley were closed because of flooding. Phillips did not know when the schools would reopen.

Phillips said there have been no reports of major flooding or mudslides, but that emergency responders are on standby.

About 6,400 Pacific Gas & Electric Co. customers in the county lost power Tuesday morning.

That number is part of the more than 35,000 PG&E customers coping with outages Tuesday afternoon as crews deal with heavy rain and high winds, a spokeswoman said.

The exact numbers keep changing as Tuesday's storm moves through the region, but as of 3 p.m. outages were affecting about 12,000 South Bay customers, 11,000 customers on the Peninsula, 10,000 in the East Bay, 3,200 in the North Bay and 1,200 in San Francisco, PG&E spokeswoman Katie Romans said.

The utility is telling customers to anticipate an extended outage, Romans said. This morning's outages were largely the result of heavy rain, but "the wind started becoming a factor" around 11 a.m., she said.

Fallen branches have caused many outages, Roman said, although the ones remaining on trees are also complicating repair efforts.

"It's a very early storm for the season and a lot of leaves are still on the trees and whipping our equipment and crews," she said.

PG&E crews will be following the storm's movement, assessing damage and making repairs, Romans said. The utility is encouraging customers to be prepared with flashlights, battery-powered radios and, of course, extra batteries.

Cal-ISO officials declared a transmission emergency Tuesday evening after a 500,000-volt power line was blown down near Moss Landing.

Officials are urging everyone across the state to conserve energy between 5 p.m. and 10 p.m. that power line is a key transmission path between Northern and Southern California.

The independent system operator said the line now has only about a third of its usual capacity. Officials say conservation is most needed at the peak consumption time around 6 p.m.

Earlier in the day, rapidly rising waters of a Rohnert Park creek swept away a transient encampment, forcing police to rescue a man who was trapped in some thickets by six-foot deep water, authorities said.

A Rohnert Park Public Safety Department spokesman said Keith Wesley Honeycutt, 41, awoke to find his head just inches away from the rising waters of a creek behind the Rancho Feliz Mobile Home Park on Redwood Drive.

Someone called police at about 9:30 a.m. to report Honeycutt’s plight and rescuers cut a path through the thickets to free him.

Meanwhile, A 75-year-old woman was killed in a three-car crash on state Highway 1 at Devil's Slide, according to the California Highway Patrol.

The crash, reported at about 7:45 a.m., closed the roadway until about 11:30 a.m., CHP Officer Kevin Kroncke said.

The driver of a Nissan Z coupe was traveling south on the narrow, twisted highway and was "going a bit too fast," CHP Officer Shawn Chase said.

The Nissan crossed over the center line and crashed into another car head-on, killing the driver, Chase said. CHP and local authorities reported in the neighborhood of 200 accidents in the greater Bay Area on Tuesday.

The National Weather Service has issued a flurry of warnings and advisories related to the storm.

"We're in the middle of it right now," meteorologist Matt Mehle said at about 10:30 a.m.

Flash flood warnings have been issued for areas in Santa Cruz and Monterey counties where recent wildfires burned. An urban and small stream flood advisory is in effect until early afternoon for most of the Bay Area.

"We're going to see moderate to heavy rainfall pretty much through the rest of the afternoon and into the first part of this evening," Mehle said.

Rainfall totals in the past six hours have reached 3-4 inches in some spots, including Los Trancos Woods in San Mateo County, he said.

High wind warnings are in effect through 11 p.m. in coastal and hilly areas, and high wind advisories have been issued for inland valleys.

"The winds are steadily increasing and we've had some pretty good wind gusts," he said.

The strongest gusts, about 70 mph, were recorded on Mt. Diablo and in Los Gatos, Mehle said.

The California Highway Patrol has been busy responding to dozens of crashes on Bay Area roadways.

"There have been a lot of crashes this morning," CHP spokesman Officer Trent Cross said. "A large majority are speed-related, people driving too fast."

"If your visibility is compromised, that's a great indication that you need to reduce your speed," he said.

In San Francisco alone, nine crashes were reported and five pedestrians were hit by cars in a three-hour period, San Francisco fire Lt. Mindy Talmadge said.

"It's crazy out there," she said.

No pedestrians were seriously injured, she said.

At San Francisco International Airport, officials warned travelers of up to three-hour flight delays because of the stormy conditions.

In the Sierra, the storm dumped at least a half foot of snow in the mountains and snarled traffic in the valleys.

More than a foot of snow was expected in some places by the end of the day with winds gusting up to 50 mph in Reno, where several traffic accidents were reported on the slick roads.

Three to six inches of snow had fallen by midday at Mt. Rose-Ski Tahoe between Reno and Lake Tahoe, and at Sugar Bowl near Truckee, Calif., officials for the ski resorts said. Between 10 and 14 inches was expected by nightfall at Mount Rose.

Neither resort plans to open this weekend but Sugar Bowl spokesman Jon Monson said the snow will make for a good base when they do.

"You want the wet heavy stuff first rather than the wet dry stuff," Monson said.

Boreal Mountain Resort opened last weekend and plans to open again this weekend.

Nearly a half inch of rain had fallen by midday in Reno with as much of 2 inches in the forecast in the foothills around town.

The stormy weather was projected to taper off Wednesday.