MENLO PARK, Calif. — A levee failure on the Pajaro River in Monterey County overnight triggered massive flooding and prompted hundreds of evacuations and dozens of water rescues as the latest atmospheric river storm pummeled large swaths of California.
The levee — 3 miles upstream from the town of Pajaro — breached late Friday night, said Nicholas Pasculli, a Monterey County spokesperson. Patrols noticed boils “bubbling up in the adjacent farmland” at 11 p.m., the first sign that there was a problem.
Thirty minutes later, the levee failed, Pasculli said. As of Saturday morning, he said, “the failure is approximately 100 feet wide.” The entire town of Pajaro is under water, he said.
Authorities conducted 60 rescues overnight, which included the use of high-water vehicles, the sheriff’s diving team, as well as the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection’s swift-water team, officials said. National Guard personnel were dispatched to assist there. At least 96 people were placed in county shelters.
Teams will be going in Saturday morning to assess the depth and extent of the flooding.
Monterey County sheriff’s officials, Watsonville police and the California Highway Patrol conducted a second round of evacuation notices around 11:30 p.m. Friday. Many residents ignored an earlier warning at 3 p.m.
“So we went back and made sure we stayed there until we were able to get people safely out and into shelters,” Pasculli said.
Rain is expected to continue in the county Saturday, with possibly up to half an inch falling along the coast, said Cindy Kobold, meteorologist with the National Weather Service. A tenth to a quarter of an inch is expected for northern portions of the county from the morning into the night.
Efforts associated with the levee break, Kobold said, are “going to be further hampered by incoming weather.”
Flash flood warnings remain in effect for parts of Santa Cruz, Santa Clara, Monterey, Tulare and Sonoma counties, according to the National Weather Service. At least two recent deaths have been confirmed as storm-related, officials said.
Major flooding was reported in the Tulare County’s Springville area — where officials conducted dozens of water rescues Friday morning — and in Kernville, where the roaring Kern River surrounded some houses and mobile homes, spurring evacuations.
The chief concern now is the threat of thunderstorms in the afternoon, said Gerald Meadows, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Hanford. The greatest risk, he said, is from the southern edge of Tulare County and northern edge of Kern County, all the way north through the San Joaquin Valley.
“We can see winds in excess of 45 miles an hour gusts out of any thunderstorm or increased rainfall potential,” Meadows said. “It’s just going to exacerbate any flooding issues that we’re already seeing.”
A tenth to a quarter of an inch of rain is expected in the valley, with a quarter inch to a half inch of precipitation in the Sierra Foothills and higher terrain, according to Meadows.
Although the bulk of precipitation fell in the last 36 hours, Meadows said Saturday morning, “we do have another event on the horizon coming in early next week that’s going to bring in a considerable amount of precipitation.”
While it won’t be as much as the one that moved through Friday, he said, “with a little bit higher snow levels or snow melt range expected we can see as much, if not more, flooding impacts.”
“One of the big messages we want to get across for the folks in the San Joaquin Valley especially, as well as the Sierra foothills, is though it’s clearing up and it’s not raining very hard right now, we’re not through this just yet,” Meadows said. “The impacts are going to increase and the thunderstorms can change the situation pretty rapidly.”
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(L.A. Times staff writer Susanne Rust reported from Menlo Park; Brittny Mejia and Liam Dillon reported from Los Angeles.)
