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The National Weather Service on Tuesday forecast that drenching rain will cause the Russian River at Guerneville in Sonoma County to reach 46 feet by Wednesday night — 14 feet above its flood stage — a level that would rank as the worst flood there in 24 years.
The last time the river rose that high was in January 1995. The all-time record for the Russian River exceeding its banks is just three feet higher, at 49.5 feet, in 1986.
The flooding is a result of a slow-moving atmospheric river storm. The Sonoma County Sheriff’s Office on Tuesday warned of “extreme threat to life and property” in the Guerneville area and ordered residents living along the Russian River to evacuate immediately.
In neighboring Mendocino County, authorities issued an evacuation warning for the greater Ukiah Valley and Hopland areas, where the Russian River was expected to start flooding low-lying areas as early as 7 p.m. and anticipated to crest closer to 1 a.m. Wednesday.
“It’s pretty serious,” said Peter Fickenscher, a hydrologist with the National Weather Service in Sacramento. “We consider this a major flood. There will be numerous impacts. It’s a rare event. The rainfall has been very focused and concentrated right through the Russian River basin. It has been non-stop rain for 24 hours and it will continue overnight into Wednesday.”
The brunt of the storm remained primarily in Sonoma, Napa, Marin and other North Bay counties, but the National Weather Service forecast increasing rain south of the Golden Gate Bridge from Tuesday night into Wednesday with the potential for downed trees, power outages and flooding on small creeks.
The wet weather should give way to dry conditions by Thursday afternoon, with the next rain for the Bay Area expected on Saturday.
San Francisco, Oakland, and Santa Cruz are expected to receive 2 to 3 inches of rain overall from Tuesday morning to Friday morning. San Jose is forecast to receive 1 inch, with higher elevations, including the Santa Cruz Mountains and the North Bay hills, receiving 4 to 8 inches.
While much of the Bay Area experienced wet roads and minor inconveniences Tuesday, in Guerneville, the situation grew more serious with each passing hour.
The Russian River was forecast to peak at 11 p.m. Wednesday evening at 46.1 feet. If it reaches that level, much of downtown Guerneville is expected to flood, including Safeway supermarket, the post office, Highway 116 west of town and Monte Rio Elementary School.
By 3 p.m. Tuesday, the river at Guerneville had already risen 20 feet from the afternoon before, surging from from 10 feet to 30 feet. It was expected to exceed the 32-foot flood stage by 7 p.m. Tuesday evening.
Russian River keeps rising. Photos from Guerneville. See interactive flood map and more info at https://t.co/3E8qX9nNBl. Be prepared to evacuate if you live near the river. pic.twitter.com/ARtWup3EeG
— Sonoma Sheriff (@sonomasheriff) February 26, 2019
Tuesday morning, the Sonoma County Sheriff’s Office recommended that people living near the river in Guerneville, Rio Nido and Monte Rio begin evacuating, but upgraded the severity of the warning Tuesday afternoon, issuing an evacuation order.
“This is a significant storm event,” sheriff’s spokeswoman Misti Harris said. “Flooding is already starting on the lower Russian River.”
At its peak Wednesday night, the river is forecast to run at about 87,000 cubic feet per second. That’s 20 times its volume on Monday, and the equivalent of 650,000 gallons — or one Olympic swimming pool — every second raging down the river.
By mid-day Tuesday, some vineyards along River Road just east of Guerneville were underwater, as was the road leading to La Crema Winery, where Mark Ferguson was blocked.
“We were going to La Crema to pick up our wine — six bottles of Pinot Noir,” Ferguson, from Napa, said as he surveyed four feet of water coursing across the roadway. “I know, First World problems.”
Colin Steen, 35, had just driven through it, with the water reaching halfway up the door of his F-350 turbo-powered diesel.
“It was like, oh my God, this is the thickest water I’ve ever gone through,” said Steen, who grew up nearby and is no stranger to driving through flooded waters and often pulled out friends who got stuck or started drifting. “I almost turned around. It was hairy.”
Satellite imagery depicting cooling cloud tops (indicative of rising motion) west of Bay Area associated with cold front. Unfortunately, this likely means burst of even heavier rain across #NorthBay later this evening, exacerbating already serious flood situation. #CAwx #CAflood pic.twitter.com/DBl0TDziN7
— Dr. Daniel Swain (@Weather_West) February 26, 2019
To the east, the Napa River also is expected to exceed its flood level by 2 feet by Wednesday morning, which could cause modest flooding in some parts of Napa at St. Helena. And the National Weather Service said Cache Creek in Yolo County was expected to exceed its banks, posing a flood risk for the town of Woodland nearby.
The reason for the fast-rising creeks and rivers? A fire hose from the Pacific Ocean. The atmospheric river storm that began soaking Northern California on Monday has been very narrowly focused, experts say, only about 100 to 200 miles wide, with Sonoma and Napa counties taking far more of the rainfall than any other place in the Bay Area. The storm also moved slowly, dumping immense amounts of water on a small area.
“The plume of moisture that is hitting the coast hasn’t moved around,” Fickenscher said. “It has been at the same location for 24 hours. The moisture comes off the ocean and hits the coastal range there. It squeezes a lot of water out of the atmosphere, and the soils are already saturated. We’ve had storm after storm.”
Russian River resident grappling with another #atmosphericriver in Guerneville, Tuesday morning @NorthBayNews @NWSBayArea #fllod #sonomacounty #castorm #cawx pic.twitter.com/5wZTKXKvuS
— Kent Porter (@kentphotos) February 26, 2019
Meanwhile, more than 200 flights were cancelled into SFO due to high winds Tuesday. And two people were rescued from a large mudslide that closed the Bohemian Highway near Monte Rio in Sonoma County.
The wet weather played a role in a fatal collision on southbound Highway 101 in Sausalito on Tuesday afternoon, according to KGO-TV, this news organization’s media partner. A tow truck driver was killed when a Chevrolet Silverado lost control and slammed into the disabled Prius he was working on.
The rains also brought substantial new amounts of snow to the Sierra Nevada.
The National Weather Service issued a winter storm warning for the Sierras, including the Lake Tahoe area, until 6 a.m. Thursday. The storm will bring 1 to 2 feet of new snow, forecasters said, with 2 to 4 feet above 7,000 feet, and wind gusts over 100 m.p.h. at the highest Sierra ridges.
“Periods of white-out conditions are likely, especially in the higher elevations,” the weather service said in its bulletin, urging motorists not to drive Tuesday night and Wednesday. “You could be stuck in your vehicle for many hours.”
On Tuesday, Interstate 80, the main freeway over the Sierra, was closed for much of the day — and later overnight — from the Nevada state line to Colfax, a distance of about 75 miles. Caltrans said it would re-evaluate the situation early Wednesday morning and issue an update.
Even before the latest storm, the Sierra Nevada statewide snow pack stood at 144 percent of its historical average on Tuesday morning, and ski resorts struggled with huge amounts of snow. At Squaw Valley, 45 feet has fallen so far this winter.
Staff writers Julia Prodis Sulek and Jason Green contributed to this report.
