By Linda Taaffe

Thursday’s heavy rain and wind gusts damaged 64 trees in Los Altos and cut power to 3,406 Los Altos and Los Altos Hills homes.

Los Altos Public Works Superintendent Brian McCarthy said the city received 11 calls related to downed trees; 53 for broken limbs; and 22 for flooding between midnight and noon Friday. A 17-member crew worked through the night clearing limbs and flushing out flooded areas.

McCarthy said this is the most damage he has seen from an early-season storm.

He attributed most of the flooding to the amount of leaves on the trees.

“They dropped off and clogged storm drains,” he said.

PG&E spokesman Brian Swanson said 700,000 customers lost power during the storm, including 1,725 in Los Altos and 1,681 Los Altos Hills.

Customers began reporting outages at around 10 p.m., Thursday, he said.

By Friday afternoon, 669 Los Altos residents and 22 Los Altos Hills residents remained without power.

Swanson called last week’s storm “pretty significant,” comparing winds to the intensity of a hurricane.

The National Weather Service reported .26 inches of rain by Friday morning and gusts of wind up to 70 mph - strong enough to ground flights at San Francisco International Airport.

The average rainfall for this time of year along the Peninsula is 1.58 inches. Last week’s storm was the first of the season.