SAN JOSE, Calif. — One of the wettest periods in the Bay Area’s recorded history began winding to a close this week with a lashing of rain that caused hillsides to buckle in the Berkeley and Oakland hills and several highways to close across Northern California.
Yet even as emergency crews scrambled to red-tag houses and clear storm drains, California water and climate officials voiced relief at mostly sunny forecasts for the foreseeable future.
A ridge of high pressure is expected to largely cut off the flow of atmospheric rivers to the state in the coming days, meaning that California should expect largely dry weather through the end of January. The only blemish in that otherwise dry forecast: A far less-severe storm rolling through the state on Wednesday, which should bear a fraction of the moisture as the previous deluges of the last two months.
“We’re finally getting through the parade of storms,” said Mike Anderson, state climatologist with the California Department of Water Resources. “It’s a chance to dry out.”
The latest storm early Monday morning — the ninth atmospheric river to hit California since Christmas — further upped the toll from three weeks of near-unceasing rain storms that have killed at least 20 people across the state and caused at least $1 billion of damage across the state.
Myriad highways across the Bay Area were closed at various times Monday, including Highway 13 in Oakland and Highway 101 in Redwood City. All paved roads in Mt. Diablo State Park were closed due to storm damage. And several portions of Highway 1 along the Central Coast also remained closed.
Before dawn on Monday, emergency crews in Pittsburg had to rescue about a dozen people trapped by flood waters that threatened their homes along Harbor Street.
Near Brentwood, 3-foot-deep flood waters surrounded Ryan Orosco’s mobile home along Bixler Road shortly after daybreak. None of the water managed to make it inside, thanks to the home standing on a raised platform. But next door, 3 to 4 inches of water seeped inside his parents’ home.
“It’s really stressful to deal with it,” said Orosco, 35. “It just baffles me how much water came down.”
“I’m looking forward to it being over,” he added. “I’m looking forward to going out and enjoying the sunshine when it comes out.”
Down the street, Mark Beard watched Monday as 6 to 12 inches of murky brown water flooded his workshop and his in-law unit where his 19-year-old son had been living.
It marked the third time since late December that his property flooded, forcing his son into a camper trailer. Beard blamed much of the issue on a nearby irrigation ditch overflowing onto his property.
“The ditches on our street are not big enough to contain this water,” Beard said. “It’s horrible — this is going to be our third time of cleaning everything out. We’ve already done a bunch of cleanup and now we’re doing it again.”
As of about 2 p.m. Monday, about 1 to 2 inches of rain had fallen across the entire Bay Area during the prior 24 hours, including 1.47 in downtown Oakland, 1.44 in downtown San Francisco and 1.46 in downtown San Jose. Mt. Diablo received 2.65 inches of rain, and slightly more than 2 inches fell over portions of the Santa Cruz Mountains.
It all added to a remarkable run of wet weather for the region.
Multiple parts of the Bay Area already have surpassed their average annual rainfall totals, according to the National Weather Service. San Francisco International Airport, for example, just hit 20 inches of rain since Oct. 1 — beating its annual average of 19.64 inches, with more than eight months to spare. The water year runs from Oct. 1 to Sept. 30.
In San Francisco, the last three weeks marked the second-wettest 22-day period in the city’s history since 1862 when devastating floods rocked much of the state, according to the National Weather Service.
All that water caused several hillsides to buckle Monday.
In Berkeley, authorities issued mandatory evacuation orders to more than a half-dozen properties after a mudslide slammed into a house along Middlefield Road.
Marjorie Cruz, 57, said her husband was making coffee around 6:30 a.m. when he noticed four feet of mud encroaching against the back of their one-story house. The two ran out the front door while the hillside above their house slowly collapsed — uprooting a shed 100 feet away and sending it careening into a pergola just steps from their house. Mounds of thick mud and rocks also crashed through a large glass door into the couple’s house before continuing into their front yard.
Just this past weekend, a rain gauge on the couple’s property had measured 12 inches of rain since Jan. 1. By Monday, it sat beneath several feet of mud.
“It’s completely shocking — I don’t have words to describe what I’m looking at,” Cruz said. “Who expects to wake up in the morning and see an entire hillside in their dining room?”
Despite the mounting damage, signs emerged that conditions were improving in some parts of the state.
River and creek levels across California continued to fall. Only two creeks, both in San Joaquin County, were above flood stage Tuesday.
California water officials noted that drought conditions have improved in many areas after three years of severe drought. The statewide Sierra Nevada snowpack, the source of nearly one-third of California’s water supply, hit a staggering 247% of normal Tuesday. Anderson, the state climatologist, said it is not currently at risk of being depleted by hot dry weather — unlike last January, February and March when a persistent ridge of high pressure developed off the West Coast, blocking storms to California and prolonging the drought.
Large reservoirs across the state also continue to steadily rise. California’s second-largest, Oroville, in Butte County, has come up an impressive 120 feet since Dec. 1, said Molly Anderson, manager of the State Water Project. In the Bay Area, Lexington Reservoir near Los Gatos hit 100% early Tuesday morning — a remarkable turnaround after having sat at just 33% on Dec. 1. Water began flowing down the concrete spillway into Los Gatos Creek for only the third time in the last 10 years.
In the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta, giant state and federal pumps will be turned up this week, White said, from 8,500 cubic feet per second to roughly 13,000 cubic feet per second. They had been slowed since Jan. 3 by state and federal rules designed to protect the endangered Delta smelt, angering farmers and some political leaders who wanted more water pumped south for farms and cities. Those rules, called the “First Flush” rules, expired Tuesday.
Sunny skies appear on tap for almost the entire rest of the month.
The lone exception appears to be a weaker storm pushing north to south on Wednesday — one that should bring .1 to .25 inches of rain to the Bay Area’s urban centers, along with .5 inches to the East Bay hills and the Santa Cruz Mountains.
It should amount to a “light finale” to such a rainy start to the year, said Colby Goatley, a National Weather Service meteorologist.
“It looks like we’ll finally get a chance at drying out starting over the weekend,” Goatley added.
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