For this point in the water year — which starts in October — the totals are around twice the average at many Bay Area spots. November was drier than normal, and December brought about double the average rainfall.

The totals below are from Dec. 1 to Jan. 16 at National Weather Service stations.

The site of the greatest reading, Uvas Canyon, is at 1,100 feet elevation near the Casa Loma fire station, about 2 miles east of Loma Prieta.

To the south, Mining Ridge, at 3,288 feet elevation in Big Sur, has recorded 84.16 inches from Dec. 1 to this week.

Read more: 35 key figures that sum up the atmospheric river blitz

Multiple sources told the Bay Area News Group that Price and her new leadership team in their first full week in office moved to place at least three deputy district attorneys, including senior prosecutors, on leave.

Deputy District Attorneys John Brouhard, Butch Ford and Colleen McMahon are among the attorneys Price placed on paid administrative leave — a status that opens the door for their termination.

Additionally, Chief of Inspectors Craig Chew and Assistant Chief of Inspectors Andrea Moreland were fired, according to multiple sources. Unlike prosecutors, inspectors are considered at-will employees and can be terminated without arbitration. The attorneys placed on leave could not be fired until after a two-pronged process, which ends with a ruling by either an administrative law judge or an arbitrator.

On Friday, the mood inside the DA’s office ranged from demoralization to panic. Multiple employees were asked to inform their colleagues, and in some cases their friends, that they were to be placed on administrative leave and other attorneys sat in their offices wondering if they would be next, according to the sources.

Matt Finnegan, an attorney with the local union representing Alameda County prosecutors, said his office is representing the attorneys and will continue to do so “as more slips come in.”

“The biggest downside is that they aren’t going to be able to handle any cases while they’re on administrative leave,” Finnegan said.

It is unclear exactly why the prosecutors were shown the door. A spokeswoman for the DA’s office declined to comment.

However, Price had criticized some of the prosecutors, including Ford, during her 2022 campaign.

Ford, a longtime prosecutor with more than 30 murder trials under his belt, prosecuted an Oakland man, Shawn Martin, who won an appeal of his murder conviction over Ford giving jurors a misleading instruction. Martin was found not guilty on retrial, and later became a volunteer for Price’s campaign.

Martin’s case became a sticking point because just before his second trial, his attorney filed a failed motion to recuse the entire Alameda County DA’s office for alleged rampant misconduct. Just days before Price’s victory in the Nov. 8 election, Martin was identified as a suspect in a nonfatal shooting outside an Oakland bar and remains at large.

The shakeup also comes just days after Price reduced charges against suspected serial killer David Misch, who was being prosecuted by McMahon. Already incarcerated at a state prison hospital for stabbing a woman to death, Misch is facing a new trial in the slayings of two Fremont women and the abduction and killing of 9-year-old Michaela Garecht in Hayward, all cold cases from the 1980s.

Price dropped special circumstances charges against Misch, stirring controversy while making good on a campaign promise to review cases where individuals face life without the possibility of parole. It is the first of many such cases Price is expected to evaluate.

The official reason for sidelining Brouhard along with McMahon would be more of a mystery, if not for a common denominator among the two veteran prosecutors. While running for DA, Price held a press conference calling out McMahon, Brouhard and other prosecutors for using their government email accounts to campaign for Nancy O’Malley in 2018. O’Malley — who defeated Price and won re-election that year — announced her retirement in May 2021, opening up the seat for the first time in decades.

Price at the time said the prosecutors used county resources “to gain an unfair advantage” against her. Price and an attorney representing her campaign filed a complaint with the Fair Political Practices Commission alleging attorneys violated a state government code prohibiting an independent expenditure committee from coordinating with a candidate — in this case O’Malley.

The Fair Political Practices Commission investigation of the complaint filed by Price remains open, according to the FPPC. Like Ford, McMahon and Brouhard have handled numerous felony trials and are among the office’s most seasoned prosecutors.

Other high-ranking prosecutors who worked under O’Malley have left or are rumored to be eyeing the exit.

Veteran prosecutor Terry Wiley, the O’Malley-backed candidate who ran against Price in the November 2022 election, retired from the office after the election.

One early departure, according to sources, is Assistant District Attorney L.D. Louis, a 20-plus-year prosecutor. Louis is said to have joined the County Counsel’s Office, which oversees legal matters for the civilian side of the county. Louis was most recently the head of the DA’s mental health unit, specializing in policy as well as collaborative courts and alternatives to incarceration.

Top-floor prosecutors and inspectors, like Wiley and Chew, are at-will employees, meaning they could be dismissed without a reason. Virtually all prosecutors, except for assistant district attorneys, are represented by the Alameda County Prosecutors Association and cannot be terminated without cause. Prosecutors began organizing in 2018 and were formalized as a union two years later.

Any prosecutor placed on leave is entitled to a so-called Skelly hearing, which provides employees an opportunity to hear and defend themselves against the employer’s allegations.

In announcing her new leadership team last Friday, Price appointed retired Oakland police Capt. Eric Lewis as chief of inspectors and former Marin County Assistant District Attorney Otis Bruce Jr. and Royl L. Roberts, a Peralta Community College administrator who recently became the district’s general counsel after passing the state bar in July, as her two chief assistant district attorneys.

Quarry project woulddestroy scenic road

EBMUD has applied for a conditional use permit from Alameda County to allow the deposit of trench soil extracted from pipeline replacement into the quarry site located at 13575 Lake Chabot Road.

EBMUD estimates that there will be 60–100 dump trucks five days a week on Lake Chabot Road for the next 40–80 years (this is not a typo), with trucks entering Lake Chabot Road in San Leandro and exiting on Foothill in Castro Valley every four or five minutes.

Lake Chabot Road, is very narrow with no shoulders, already heavy with 3,500 cars a day, bicycle traffic, wildlife and hikers. It is currently closed due to storm damage. This fragile but needed scenic road can’t support dump trucks which will make it unsafe for those of us who use it now.

Teri SchlesingerSan Leandro

Prop. 13 proves costlyto government programs

“Prop. 13 is vital to senior community” in the Jan. 10 East Bay Times (Page A6) misleads readers.

Yes, Proposition 13 is vital to the senior community of homeowners, but Proposition 13 is also unfair to them and others, as well. In fact, Proposition 13 has been exploited by the community of big businesses while also harming the senior community and others.

Proposition 13 was passed in 1978 — thanks to the deceptive slogans of Howard Jarvis and Paul Gann — as “a way to keep Grandma in her home.” But it was also a way to keep the property taxes of businesses low — especially big businesses like Chevron and Disneyland.

Because the low property taxes of Proposition 13 drastically reduced funding of local and state governments, seniors and others have suffered — impoverished schools, government offices understaffed with shorter hours, streets and other infrastructure in poor repair.

Prop. 13 needs fixing to fairly serve all.

Ruby MacDonaldEl Cerrito

Feds overreach withtalk of gas stove ban

The federal government wants to ban gas stoves. I have a stove with an electric oven and gas burners.

I don’t like cooking with electric burners. It’s difficult to regulate the heat; with gas burners it’s so much easier. Gov. Gavin Newsom also wanted to do that but not for restaurants. The government always wants to come after the little guy and make our lives more difficult.

It’s bad enough already with inflation and high gas, food and energy prices. They blame everything on climate change. Enough is enough.

Cathy LedbetterNewark

The U.S. should joinnuclear weapons treaty

Jan. 22 is a historic day. It’s the day the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons entered into force in 2021, aka the “Ban-aversary.”

This year, over 100 events across the country (including in Livermore) will celebrate the treaty with banner hangings, bell-ringings, visits and letters to elected officials, public readings of the treaty, and more.

U.S. leaders have long said we will lead the way to nuclear abolition. It’s time to make that promise real — join the treaty and lift the nuclear shadow that looms over the world.

Scott YundtLivermore

Letter is wrong to paintthe GOP as a monolith

Re. “Let’s celebrate heroes of the Jan. 6 breach,” Page A6, Jan. 11:

Thanks to Sandy White, I know who I am.

I bicycle everywhere (to save lives and the planet) and maxed out my solar. I’m not “rich” but donate 15% of my gross income to charities, regardless of whether they lean “left” or “right.” They all help people.

She proclaims “Let’s remind everyone which party (Republicans) tried to destroy our democracy and which party (Democrats) saved it.” She implies the five deaths of Jan. 6 (three by natural causes) are comparable to the 2,403 who died at Pearl Harbor — a true “day of infamy.” This veteran disagrees.

Who am I? A Republican. Therefore I am also a “Destroyer of Democracy.” She mentions no exceptions.

We are individuals, not a mindless collective. I consider ridiculous generalizations and uncompromising narratives (like hers) to be the true “Destroyers.” Obi-Wan Kenobi observed, “Only a Sith deals in absolutes.” Sandy, welcome to the Dark Side.

Stacy SpinkCastro Valley

]]> https://www.eastbaytimes.com/2023/01/12/letters-1115/feed/ 0 8715206 2023-01-12T16:30:54+00:00 2023-01-13T03:56:52+00:00 https://www.eastbaytimes.com/2023/01/11/dark-dreary-bay-area-weather-is-expected-to-last-into-next-week/ https://www.eastbaytimes.com/2023/01/11/dark-dreary-bay-area-weather-is-expected-to-last-into-next-week/#respond Wed, 11 Jan 2023 19:24:41 +0000 https://www.eastbaytimes.com/?p=8712538&preview=true&preview_id=8712538 Don’t be fooled by Thursday’s lull.

The eighth and ninth storms to target California since Christmas are on the way this holiday weekend, making for volatile and treacherous conditions from the Bay Area to the Sierra.

The storms themselves won’t be as intense as those that devastated communities in the Santa Cruz mountains and along the beaches over the past week, but with rivers running high and soils already saturated, more flooding and mudslides are predicted across California. The Salinas River in southern Monterey County in particular is expected to flood Friday.

“We definitely appreciate the bounty, but we wish it was spread out over a longer period,” Jeff Lorber, meteorologist with the National Weather Service, said Wednesday.

So much snow has fallen already this season that sensors are registering what is considered the “full seasonal snowpack” normally expected by April 1, state climatologist Michael Anderson told reporters during a news briefing Wednesday. It’s still too soon to say whether the snowpack levels will hold until then, but if they do, they could provide ample snowmelt to continue to fill the reservoirs this spring and summer.

Kevin “Coop” Cooper, a longtime Tahoe area ski condition reporter and resort marketing consultant, said the abundant snow is a welcome change after several lean snow years during the state’s drought.

“Right now, I’m looking out of my house and it’s snowing lightly. We’re seeing a nice new amount of snow, temperatures are dropping,” he said Wednesday. “After my 30 years up here, this is one of the best MLK weekends we’ve seen in a long time.”

But that comes with a catch.

Video: California storms drop hail in the Bay Area, cause rockslides, sinkholes and more

With heavy snow and high winds predicted in the Sierra through the weekend, getting to the mountains could be dangerous. Travel in vulnerable areas, especially the Sierra, is not advised from Friday afternoon through Saturday, Lorber said, “when the winds and the rainfall will be at their peak.” The ninth storm is expected to roar in late Sunday through Tuesday.

It’s the kind of warning that weekend warriors amped to hit the Sierra slopes don’t like to heed.

“Fresh snow is like going through butter,” said Andrew Pham, 22, who stopped at Helm of Sun Valley ski shop in San Jose to attach bindings to his new snowboard and is planning to drive up Friday. “When you’re the first one on it, ooh.”

By Wednesday, snowpack levels reached 226% of average for this time of year, beating out 2005 which was 206% of average. All that fresh snow is giving experts reason to feel optimistic that drought conditions that have gripped the Golden State for three years could meaningfully ease by the end of the snowy season.

“The fact that we’re continuing to get this precipitation is just absolutely fantastic,” said Andrew Schwartz, lead scientist at the UC Berkeley Central Sierra Snow Laboratory near Donner Summit. “It’s still unlikely that we’re going to get completely out of this drought in a single year. But if the storm door stays open… we can put a serious dent in it.”

As of Wednesday, major Northern California reservoirs have registered “impressive gains,” Anderson, the state climatologist, said. But there’s still plenty of catching up to do. Lake Don Pedro east of Modesto is at 69% capacity, for instance, and San Luis Reservoir southeast of the Bay Area, which has risen 35 feet since Dec. 1, is 40% full. The Shasta and Oroville reservoirs, the behemoths of California’s water system, are at 42% and 47% respectively. Lake Oroville has risen more than 90 feet since Dec. 1, surpassing its 2021 and 2022 levels.

“We’ve had quite a deficit because of the drought,” said Molly White, principal engineer with the state water board. “So we’re seeing steep inclines right now in storage, and hope that continues.”

In the Bay Area, Mount Umunhum in Santa Cruz County registered the highest rainfall total in the 24 hours leading to 10 a.m. Wednesday — 1.03 inches. Concord recorded 0.97 inches of rain. About six-tenths of an inch fell in Los Gatos; a quarter-inch fell at Ben Lomond, and two-tenths of an inch fell in San Jose and at the San Francisco International Airport.

In Tahoe, business is booming at ski resorts, despite struggles to keep lifts operational as a series of snow storms continues to plow through the Sierras. So much snow has accumulated in the Sierras already that ski resorts are having to keep track of avalanche risk hour-by-hour.

Mark McLaughlin, the so-called “storm king” who keeps track of Sierra conditions, said he listened to the concussive pounding Wednesday morning of cannons pelting the mountain sides of the Palisades Tahoe resort to trigger avalanches to improve safety before skiers arrive.

“I bet you I heard 20 of them this morning, 20 blasts,” McLaughlin said Wednesday.

John O’Connell, spokesman for Caltrans in the Lake Tahoe area, recommended that skiers from the Bay Area hit the road Thursday if they can, as the storm may arrive earlier Friday than initially expected. They should be prepared to put chains on their car tires unless they have four-wheel or all-wheel drive vehicles with tires designed for rain and snow. Either way, if there are chain controls due to ice and snow, vehicles should drive no faster than 30 mph, he said. And temporary road closures are possible during the snowstorms.

“We recommend people bring blankets, bottled water and snacks, have their phone charged up and a full tank of gas,” O’Connell said. “If we do have to hold traffic, you might be stuck up there in traffic that’s not moving for a little bit. We just want people to be prepared.”

Pham, who was tuning up his snowboard in San Jose on Wednesday, is still hoping to hit that fresh snow.

“But Dad called and said the storm is coming and I shouldn’t go,” he said. “So I guess I’m 50/50. But it would probably be worth it.”

Staff writer Scooty Nickerson contributed to this story.

State and local officials on Tuesday began cleaning up from the half-dozen atmospheric rivers that have pummeled California since late December, killing at least 17 people and leaving 96,000 people under evacuation warnings or orders amid the risk of flooding and mudslides. Their work came amid a brief respite from the rain and the wind but with more strong storms expected to arrive later in the week.

Although none of the coming storms are forecast to be as big as the “bomb cyclone” that hit last week, residents have been warned to stay vigilant. While touring the storm and tide-ravaged community of Capitola on Wednesday, Gov. Gavin Newsom cautioned that even a little rain could cause outsized effects due to heavily-saturated soils.

“The magnitude of this is not isolated to smaller communities, it is scaled across the largest state in our union,” Newsom said. “We’re soaked. This place is soaked. And now just more modest amount of precipitation could have as equal or greater impact in terms of the conditions on the ground.”

On Tuesday, nearly every corner of the state had felt the impacts of the recent atmospheric onslaught that caused flooding and myriad downed trees in Northern California, mudslides and a major evacuation in the Southern California community of Montecito and heavy snow across the length of the Sierra Nevada.

California Storms video: Hail in the Bay Area, rockslides, sinkholes and more

On the Central Coast, where some of the storm’s worst effects were felt, a 5-year-old boy died Monday after being swept away in a San Luis Obispo County creek, authorities said. A woman also drowned the same day after driving onto a mile-long section of Central Coast roadway that had been closed due to flooding, according to the California Highway Patrol.

Visiting the Santa Cruz coast, Newsom vowed to provide assistance to Capitola, where huge waves stoked from a “bomb cyclone” last week tore out a section of the historic Capitola Wharf and smashed and flooded a half-dozen beachfront Capitola Village restaurants.

“We’re not walking away,” Newsom said, standing on the town’s waterfront where generations of Bay Area residents have gone to frolic on the sand, dine and drink on seaside patios. From Dec. 31 through Sunday, heavy rains and a devastating tidal event caused at least $28 million in damages to public property across unincorporated Santa Cruz County, said Jason Hoppin, spokesman for Santa Cruz County. In addition, five buildings were red-tagged, and another 131 were deemed significantly damaged but repairable.

That doesn’t include any damage sustained Monday when the San Lorenzo River flooded its banks and sent water rushing into numerous buildings. Nor does it include a line of gusty storms to tear through the county early Tuesday morning, which prompted dozens of 911 calls from people reporting trees falling onto their houses..

Newsom gave no specifics regarding state aid to businesses Wednesday, nor details about funding for rebuilding the wharf. He also did not reveal whether the Seacliff Wharf — a state facility just down the coast that once led to a now-damaged cement-filled ship — would be repaired after damage from the storm. “All that will be determined,” Newsom said.

Around the Bay Area, the true extent of the recent storms began coming into focus Tuesday, even as thunderstorms dropped pea-sized hail and yet more rain.

In Santa Clara County, at least $24 million in damages to public property had been tallied by city and county officials through midday Tuesday — a figure that was expected to evolve as more assessments were completed, a county official said. Much of that tally included damage to roadways — more than a dozen of which remained closed midday Tuesday.

The heavy rains also caused dozens of sewage spills around the Bay Area and other parts of the state as sewage systems became overwhelmed by huge amounts of water pouring into the ground and seeping into pipes. Since New Year’s Eve, for example, at least 22 million gallons of “unauthorized discharges” occurred in the Bay Area, said Eileen White, executive officer for the San Francisco Bay Water Quality Control Board.

About 150 calls a day have streamed into the dispatch center for Bay Area Tree Specialists of late, said Michelle Reulman, the business’ office manager.

“This is a state of emergency,” said John Gill, owner of Majestic Tree Service, just moments after helping to clear a tree that fell on three vehicles and a house Wednesday off Bascom Avenue in San Jose. “You drive every five minutes, and there’s a tree down on a house or the street or the road or it’s flooded.”

In the early morning hours of Tuesday, a falling eucalyptus tree topped a 137-foot tall transmission tower in San Jose’s Willow Glen neighborhood. The weight of the tower brought down three distribution poles as well as power lines and some transformers, Pacific Gas & Electric Co. spokesperson Mayra Tostado said in an update posted to Twitter. As a result, about 2,100 customers lost power.

“We’ve brought in additional resources to be able to restore power as quickly as possible to our customers,” Tostado said. “We understand how disruptive it has been to be without power and we’re doing everything we can to turn the lights back on as quickly as possible.”

Tostado said the region saw winds up to 70 mph and 100 cloud-to-ground lightning strikes.

The South Bay took a big punch from Mother Nature today. @PGE4Me responded to an outage in San Jose’s Willow Glen due to a eucalyptus tree knocking down a 137-ft. tall transmission tower. With its weight, it pulled down power lines and poles connected to it. Here’s my report. pic.twitter.com/HJUJm9tqDA

— Mayra Tostado (@PGE_Mayra) January 11, 2023

Many of the trees were felled during an onslaught of thunderstorms Tuesday that knocked out power to tens of thousands of people across the Bay Area, while dropping between .25 and 1.25 inches of rain across most of the South Bay, the East Bay and the Peninsula. Much of the Santa Cruz mountains received between .66 and 1.4 inches of rain overnight, pushing three-day storm totals to between 6 and 8 inches of rain across much of the area.

As of 4:30 p.m. Tuesday, 24-hour precipitation totals around the Bay Area included 1.21 inches in San Francisco, 1.18 inches in Oakland, 1.11 inches in Concord,.41 inches in San Jose and .40 inches in Livermore, according to the weather service.

More than 40,000 PG&E customers were without power as of 5 p.m. Tuesday — the majority of them in the South Bay where more than 27,000 customers remained without electricity, according to the utility provider.

To the east across the Sierra Nevada, a remarkable run of snowfall continued to push the state’s snowpack higher — reaching 215% of its average for this date across the state, according to the California Department of Water Resources. The southern Sierra already has received more than it normally gets by April 1, while the northern Sierra is about 75% of the way to that mark.

Another .1 to .25 inches of rain is expected to fall over much of the Bay Area on Wednesday, with higher amounts forecasted to hit the North Bay and the Santa Cruz Mountains, according to the National Weather Service. Some brief showers may hit the region on Thursday or Friday, but the area should remain mostly dry under cloudy skies those days.

Many residents found themselves whiplashed from the see-sawing weather. In Soquel, near Santa Cruz, Roman Bodnarchuk wondered aloud at the next curveball from Mother Nature after a dramatic two weeks of joy and catastrophe.

Just after Christmas, he had finally succeeded in getting his war-refugee parents out of Ukraine — where they lived near a power station under frequent Russian bombardment — and to his rented house by Soquel Creek.

“It’s very stressful,” said Bodnarchuk, 30. “You can imagine how frustrating it was to leave the house when my mom is sick and having to deal with all these situations. Hopefully the house withstands all this damage.”

He couldn’t help but feel a sense of dread at viewing forecasts for additional rain in the coming week

“We’re very worried,” Bodnarchuk said. “It’s been difficult enough already.”

Rick Hurd, Julia Prodis Sulek, Jason Green and the Associated Press contributed to this report. 

Seeno, Concord won’tmake happy marriage

The presentation by the Seeno group at Saturday’s hearing proudly portrayed the development of the Naval Weapons Station not so much as a housing project but as an attempt to create a wonderful “City on the Hill.”

That being so, thinking of it as a contract with terms capable of enforcement, while partially true, misconceives the relationship between Concord and Albert Seeno III. Many important issues — both known and unknown — will present themselves in the years to come. Think of a marriage contract and a successful marriage. The first doesn’t have all that much to do with the second.

So I ask you, do you want your city to marry the Seenos? Knowing what we know, there would be a lot of quarrels about money, and little happiness.

Jim and Barbara WolpmanWalnut Creek

Restoration projectthreatens road, hillside

EBMUD’s plan to restore the quarry on Lake Chabot Road would require 60 to 100 dump trucks a day to transport soil for the next 40 to 80 years up Lake Chabot Road, dump the dirt at the quarry, travel to Fairmount Avenue in Castro Valley and down to 580.

Recent heavy rains have again created rockslides and undercuts to Lake Chabot Road, leading to its current closure. The quarry is located next to the Hayward Fault. There are new open fissures and mudslides on the quarry hillside itself. The foundation of this road is fragile, and even spending millions of dollars to fix it, will still not support 60-100 full dump trucks a day, nor will the hillsides above be a safe location to dump this dirt.

Anne CawoodSan Leandro

Prop. 13 is vitalto senior community

Re. “California’s Proposition 13 battle enters a new phase,” Page A6, Jan 6:

Few today remember how dire the property tax situation was in California. Tax assessments were running on average 2.65% of current market value. If we were to return to pre-Proposition 13 standards: A house that was bought for $200,000 years ago (and now worth $1,000,000) might now be paying $2,400 a year. Ending Proposition 13 would have the tax explode to $26,500. No one could possibly have prepared for that.

Proposition 13 limits taxes to 1% of the purchase price plus 2% tax increases per year. Ending Proposition 13 would result in vast, uncontrolled increases that would force many to dump their homes, in unison, forcing prices to plummet. The first to sell would be lucky; the rest would find themselves underwater and unable to sell, likely facing foreclosure.

Inflation causes the price of everything to rise, including homes. Inflation then generates a giant tax windfall for the government.

Mark FernwoodDanville

Finding the goodin Republican circus

One wonders if the value of those self-righteous Republicans, who proved to be the worst of allies, lay in forcing the others into seeking common ground from among the best of their enemies.

Perhaps the first House rule could be: “Every member must sit next to a representative from the other side whom they’ve never sat next to before.”

I know, it sounds crazy, but not as crazy as what we just witnessed on the House floor.

Linda ThorlaksonCastro Valley

Make Liz Cheneyour attorney general

Liz Cheney received her Juris Doctor from the University of Chicago Law School in 1996. Merrick Garland should be reconfirmed as a federal judge, and he should be replaced as the U.S. Attorney General by Liz Cheney.

This would make the Biden Administration more bipartisan and install a most knowledgeable person to oversee the criminal/civil violations of former federal officeholders.

Ronald GreeneLos Altos

]]> https://www.eastbaytimes.com/2023/01/09/letters-1109/feed/ 0 8710478 2023-01-09T16:30:46+00:00 2023-01-10T04:08:07+00:00 https://www.eastbaytimes.com/2023/01/09/bay-area-rainfall-chart-the-totals-since-the-weekend/ https://www.eastbaytimes.com/2023/01/09/bay-area-rainfall-chart-the-totals-since-the-weekend/#respond Mon, 09 Jan 2023 22:59:47 +0000 https://www.eastbaytimes.com/?p=8710364&preview=true&preview_id=8710364 After a break in the rain Thursday, another series of storms is expected to arrive Friday morning and continue into next week.

The following totals from the National Weather Service are from Saturday, Jan. 7 — when rain began in the evening for most of the Bay Area — through 6 a.m. Thursday, Jan. 12. They are raw numbers, not yet checked for quality control.

The site of the greatest reading, Uvas Canyon, is at 1,100 feet elevation near the Casa Loma fire station, about 2 miles east of Loma Prieta.

Higher totals were reported to the south: Mining Ridge, at 3,288 feet elevation in Big Sur, had 21 inches.

Find the chart for the previous week of rain here.

Because of risk of flooding and mudslides, evacuation warnings have been issued for some residents in Alameda and Santa Clara counties.

The map above shows the approximate areas of the advisories. As of Monday afternoon, there were no mandatory evacuations in those counties.

Alameda County

Residents of Kilkare Road, Palomares Road and Niles Canyon Road are “strongly encouraged” to evacuate. Details and updates at the sheriff’s Facebook and Twitter pages.

Santa Clara County

Warnings issued for:

• The Highway 101/Bolsa Road area, south of Gilroy.

• Pacheco Pass River Basin residents on Lovers Lane between Highway 152 and Shore Road, and El Toro Road between Highway 152 and Bloomfield Avenue.

• Uvas Reservoir watershed areas including Thousand Trails RV Park, Uvas Pines RV Park and homes south of Lions Peak and in the area of Watsonville and Day roads.

Residents of those areas are advised to prepare for short-notice evacuation. Find details and updates at the sheriff’s Facebook page.

San Mateo County and Contra Costa County

No official warnings had been issued as of Monday morning, but the west side of the Peninsula and the Danville area were under advisory on the Zonehaven emergency map.

In San Pablo, residents of 11th Street between Palmer Avenue and Rivers Street have been urged to use sandbags to protect their homes and to be prepared to leave if the neighborhood canal floods.

South of the Bay Area

Warnings including mandatory evacuations have been issued in Santa Cruz County and Monterey County. Santa Cruz County’s evacuation zones can be found on the Zonehaven map. For Monterey County’s warnings and orders, see the sheriff’s Facebook or Twitter page.

• Storm tracking map

• How to sign up for flood alerts

• The best way to use sandbags

The latest atmospheric river-fed storm is expected to pack damaging winds and drop several more inches of rain over much of the Bay Area — a double-whammy that forecasters say should peak Monday morning and linger through Tuesday. Even more storms are forecast to make landfall beginning later this week — threatening to further saturate soils during one of the Bay Area’s most waterlogged stretches in recent years.

On Sunday afternoon, Gov. Gavin Newsom implored Californians to avoid driving through flooded roadways and to prepare for even more water in the near future — noting that 12 people had died over the last week and a half due to storms across the state.

“Use your common sense,” Newsom said at a press conference. “Don’t test fate… just a foot of water and your car’s floating. So it’s really important that people are mindful, and again, just use their common sense.”

The National Weather Service issued a flood warning for areas along the Guadalupe River above the Almaden Expressway in San Jose. The river is expected to reach its flood state of 9.5 feet by 9 a.m. Monday before cresting at 11.5 feet at about 4 p.m. that day.

A flood watch also exists through Tuesday for almost the entire Bay Area. Alameda Creek near Niles Canyon and Sunol could reach its flood stage of 9 feet on Monday morning before cresting that afternoon, just shy of its 14-foot, 9-inch record. Also at risk of topping their banks were Arroyo de la Laguna at Verona in Alameda County and the San Lorenzo River in Santa Cruz County.

On Sunday afternoon, Santa Clara County officials issued evacuation warnings — essentially, advisements to be prepared to leave a moment’s notice — to people living in the watershed areas of the Uvas Reservoir and Pacheco Pass River Basin, due to flooding concerns. The warnings are impacting roughly 1,600 people, according to the county.

“This is going to be dangerous,” said Brayden Murdock, a National Weather Service meteorologist.

Updated forecast rainfall totals for round 2, expected to begin tonight between 10 pm and midnight. The heaviest rain will occur between 4 am and 4 pm Monday. Slight lowering of totals from the Bay Area northward and southern valleys. More details in follow up tweet.#CAwx

1/x pic.twitter.com/zs2HzaehAH

— NWS Bay Area (@NWSBayArea) January 8, 2023

Standing under a break in the clouds on Sunday in San Francisco’s Potrero Hill neighborhood, Becky Luong expressed fatigue at the unrelenting pace of storms. Her home’s garage in the Portola neighborhood was flooded with about an inch of water during Wednesday’s storm — ruining several pairs of shoes stored down there and leaving damaged a few bags of concrete.

“I’ve never experienced such a big storm like this,” said Luong, who has lived in the city for close to three decades. “It is the wind that makes it worse. This is different. I got scared.”

“I’m tired,” she added, about the recent wet weather. “I’m so grateful to see the sun today.”

Nearby, Nick Bulley waited in line for workers to fill his car with sandbags to protect his house in the hilly Twin Peaks neighborhood. The backyard and first floor of his newly renovated home were flooded during the New Year’s Eve storm with an inch of water, likely causing thousands of dollars in damage. On Sunday, he ran a dehumidifier to suck up all the moisture and limit the cost of repairs.

“This was just an unusual event,” Bulley said. “We weren’t prepared. We didn’t have sandbags. Now we’re making sure we have something to at least toss in front of the doors.”

The heaviest downpours should begin to subside by midday Monday, Murdock said, though chances for additional precipitation should linger through Tuesday. Most of the Bay Area — including San Francisco and Oakland — could see 2 to 3 inches of rain by Tuesday, the weather service said. San Jose is expected to see a little more than 2 inches from this storm.

The heaviest rainfall should fall over the waterlogged Santa Cruz Mountains, where 5 to 7 inches of rain is expected, with a few places seeing as much as 8 inches. To the south, the Santa Lucia Mountains along the Big Sur coast could see 8 to 12 inches of rain in some spots.

Winds of 25 to 35 mph are expected across much of the Bay Area’s lower-lying regions, with gusts potentially hitting 60 mph, the National Weather Service said while issuing a high wind warning. Along the coast and the Bay Area’s peaks, forecasters are expecting winds of 35 to 50 mph and gusts of up to 80 mph.

“This is also going to be a wind event,” said Murdock, adding that “when you do have strong winds after seeing plenty of moisture in the soil, you can see trees fall.”

The storm marks the latest atmospheric river to drench Northern California over the last couple of weeks, whipsawing the region from one of its driest three-year runs in recorded history to a state of perpetual flood risk. Oakland, for example, has received 15.84 inches of rain since Dec. 1 — almost all of it in the last two weeks. That’s more than two-thirds of the 22.89 inches of rain it normally gets in a calendar year.

Still, even though the recent wet weather has begun to alleviate drought conditions across Northern California, experts say even more moisture is needed to put an end the region’s historic drought. Water levels at some of the state’s largest reservoirs — including Lake Shasta, Lake Oroville and Trinity Lake — remain below historical averages for this time of year, even though some have started to tick upward in recent weeks.

He said that federal resources have been mobilized to help the National Weather Service’s forecasts. Five Air Force C-130s and a National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration aircraft are flying over the Pacific Ocean – reaching as far as Hawaii – to gather data on the coming storms.

“These next storms are really going to start seeing some flood stages be reached,” said Anderson, during a call with reporters Saturday. “There’s a lot to keep an eye on and a lot to track.”

For more on the latest emergency warnings, go to aware.zonehaven.com.

High Wind Warning has been issued for our region starting tonight at 8 PM into Monday 4 PM. Expect southerly winds near 20 to 35 mph with gust up to 60 mph in the valley locations and 35 to 50 mph with gust up 80 mph along the coast and highest peaks. #CAwx #highwind pic.twitter.com/VbzaXV22ez

— NWS Bay Area (@NWSBayArea) January 8, 2023

This latest storm is an atmospheric river, essentially a giant conveyor belt of water in the sky and moisture-rich maelstrom rolling in from the Pacific Ocean to fill California’s reservoirs and blanket the Sierra Nevada with snow, which has the potential to cause catastrophic flooding and mudslides.

By the scale used to measure the strength and impact of such weather systems, this torrent is a Category 3 out of 5. The scale meteorologists use bases the five categories of intensity on the duration of the tempest and the magnitude of water content called the Integrated Water Vapor Transport (IVT).

Wednesday’s atmospheric river is also being labeled a “bomb cyclone” for its rapid strengthening off-shore. That term describes an area of low pressure that intensified by 24 millibars within 24 hours, with millibars being a unit of measurement for atmospheric pressure.

Grounded from lofty definitions and weather science meanwhile are the residents grappling with surviving the wind-whipped deluge. Below are photos documenting their experiences. While we encourage your safest preparation and response to this emergency, if you have any visuals to share, please email photovideo@bayareanewsgroup.com.