Christmas Eve storm packs wild winds across San Diego County, killing 1

A Christmas Eve storm whose winds were stronger than expected knocked out power to as many as 14,000 homes and businesses, downed trees, delayed scores of airline flights and made driving a misty mess across San Diego County.

And in City Heights, a man was killed by a falling tree.

The system isn’t quite done marking people miserable.

Scattered showers — and possibly raucous thunderstorms — will follow Thursday night and early Friday. It’ll then turn dry. But forecasters say a new storm might hit sometime around New Year’s Eve.

The weather seemed more weird than threatening early Wednesday. The sun was out in some places, and the temperature quickly rose to 76 in San Diego, 10 degrees above average.

The warmth was tied to the moisture the storm was pulling north from the subtropics.

Heavy rain arrived about 1 p.m. Two hours later, the totals were modest. San Diego International Airport recorded only 0.20 inches. Carlsbad had about twice as much. Palomar Observatory was the outlier, getting 1.82 inches from rain that began earlier in the day.

The real story was the powerful winds from the south, which made hardy trees bend and break and whipped up white caps in San Diego Bay.

The National Weather Service estimated that the winds would top out at 40 mph to 45 mph. But they gusted to 61 mph at Cuyamaca Peak in East County, 59 mph at Imperial Beach and 52 mph in San Marcos. And they were long-lasting.