Along the Central Coast, California's scenic Highway 1 is closed 20 miles south of Big Sur after a section of the roadway collapsed when the cliffside below gave way amid torrential rain. Photos of the highway show a huge piece of the road missing, with both the north and southbound lanes washed away.

Caltrans spokesperson Jim Shivers said the damage to the highway is called a slip out. "It's where we lose a part of the highway and now we're facing a project to clean and repair that stretch," Shivers said. "This is the only location we're aware of where this happened in the storm. Our maintenance team is patrolling the highway now to look for other damage."

Shivers said it's unknown when the road will be reopened, but engineers are assessing the situation and should have more information later today.

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Caltrans officials say landslide repairs will keep Highway 1 south of Big Sur closed for months, rewriting travel plans for anyone who had been hoping to make a coastal road trip from Southern California in early spring.

Beyond that, “It is too early to establish a timeline,” Caltrans spokesman Kevin Drabinski said. Though Monterey County officials partially lifted a storm-related evacuation order in the area Monday afternoon, the debris flow in some places “is still active. … And we have rain coming as soon as tonight.”

The biggest problem is a 150-foot-long chasm where the highway used to run at Rat Creek, two miles south of the Esalen Institute. That area, authorities noted, lies below the “burn scar” left by the Dolan fire, which blackened about 125,000 acres last August.

In addition to the Rat Creek damage, authorities said about 60 points along the highway suffered damage. Many “need to dry out and stabilize before we can get in there and do full repairs and cleanup,” Drabinski said.

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In a release Thursday, Caltrans Director Toks Omishakin said, “We’re focused on restoring travel on this section by early summer.” The repair cost is estimated at $11.5 million, involving “the manipulation of tens of thousands of cubic yards of material.”

However, officials also warned that more wet weather could slow the work.

“We know that seasonally, March is a heavy rain month, and we’re moving a lot of dirt around,” said Caltrans spokesman Kevin Drabinski. Still, he added, “We estimate that by the middle of summer it will be open.”

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