Plan B Forum

Napa River expected to flood, second time this week

NAPA COUNTY (KRON) — A Flood Warning has been issued in the St. Helena area as the Napa River is expected to reach flood stages Thursday evening, according to the National Weather Service.

The warning is in effect until further notice.

This would be the second time the Napa River flooded in three days.

The last major flooding happened Tuesday.

Reports of mudslides and power outages were widespread along the California coast, where inches of rain were expected to cause major travel problems.

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Mudslides became a major concern Friday afternoon, and along U.S. Route 101, one such slide closed the northbound lanes of the mud-covered freeway north of Ventura, according to the California Highway Patrol. Another mudslide closed Highway 154 at Painted Cave and Gibraltar.

In Lebec, a rockslide forced the closure of northbound I-5 lanes.

The city of Duarte, in the foothills of the San Gabriel Mountains east of Los Angeles, ordered the evacuation of more than 200 homes below a burn scar by 7 a.m. Friday, according to the Associated Press. In several areas across the state, burn scars from recent wildfires left the land unstable, and residents were asked to move away from those locations as the rain arrived.

(MORE: Los Angeles Could See Most Rain in Years)

Voluntary evacuation orders were issued for parts of Camarillo Springs, according to the Ventura County Sheriff's Office of Emergency Services. The Santa Barbara Sheriff's Department issued an evacuation warning for the greater Sherpa fire burn area. The County Office of Emergency Management issued also issued an evacuation warning for parts of Solvang west of Santa Barbara.

More than 50,000 Southern California Edison customers were without power at 2 p.m. PST Friday afternoon.

Several crashes were reported in the San Luis Obispo and Santa Barbara counties and power outages have been reported in Cayucos, Santa Margarita, San Luis Obispo, Arroyo Grande, Nipomo, Santa Maria, Orcutt, Vandenberg Village, Los Alamos, and Buellton, according to KSBY.com.

"It's crazy," Robin Johnson, an academic adviser at the University of California, Santa Barbara, told the AP. "It's just pouring down rain. The wind is just going nuts."

Powerful winds brought down trees crushed cars at Morro Bay High School and forced rangers to evacuate campers at Morro Bay State Park. Students were put on lockdown at the high school after several trees fell on campus, crushing two cars and the school’s solar panels.

The Los Angeles Police Department urged residents to avoid driving if possible after reports of flooded streets and downed power lines throughout the city.

More than 300 arriving and departing flights were canceled or delayed Friday at Los Angeles International Airport, according to the Associated Press. Southwest Airlines canceled all flights scheduled to depart after 10 a.m. at Orange County's John Wayne Airport, and American Airlines canceled all flights scheduled to depart between 9 a.m. and 7:30 p.m., according to a tweet from the airport.

"The storm looks to be the strongest storm to hit southwest California this season," said the National Weather Service office for the Los Angeles region. "It is likely the strongest within the last six years and possibly even as far back as December 2004 or January 1995."

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More than 70,000 customers were without power Friday across three counties near Santa Cruz after high winds knocked down two transmission power poles, according to KSBW-TV. Schools were closed Friday morning in Monterey and San Bernadino counties, the station also said.

Flooding is a concern in many of the reservoirs in central and northern California. Officials closely monitored the Anderson Reservoir, which is at 99 percent capacity, KGO-TV reported. The reservoir should only be at 68 percent because of seismic concerns, the station noted.

At Lake Oroville, where crews worked all week to lower the water level despite a broken spillway and an emergency spillway that nearly failed, officials were confident that the rainfall wouldn't cause additional problems for the reservoir. The San Francisco Chronicle said the water level was 40 feet below Sunday's level, when nearly 200,000 residents were ordered to evacuate as the lake overflowed.

"We’re making great progress and are able to handle the incoming inclement weather," Bill Croyle, acting director of the California Department of Water Resources, said in a press conference, as reported by the Chronicle.

San Francisco International Airport led the nation in flight cancellations Friday, with more than 150 flights called off in the morning and afternoon, according to FlightAware.

Gob wrote:Still sweltering here.

As a winter storm caused havoc up and down California on Friday, weather experts issued this warning: Ready or not, there’s more to come.

After a brief Saturday interlude, gusty winds and drenching rains will return on late Sunday and Monday, boosting precipitation totals for what is already one of California’s wettest winters on record.

“There’s a jet stream pointing right toward us, bringing in system after system,” said Brian Garcia, warning coordination meteorologist at the National Weather Service in Monterey.

The incoming storm will start warm, then turn cold by midweek, perhaps delivering snow to the top of Mount Diablo and other local peaks, he said.

Friday’s deluge hit especially hard in Southern California, which has escaped much of this winter’s earlier havoc — flooding streets, stranding drivers, toppling trees and power lines, triggering rescues and canceling and disrupting flights at Mineta San Jose International Airport, San Francisco International Airport, and Los Angeles International Airport, among others.

A flash flood watch is in effect through Saturday morning for Santa Barbara, Ventura and Los Angeles counties.

It’s your usual winter — for Oregon and Washington, not California, Garcia said.

“It’s a Pacific Northwest type of thing,” he said. Normally, our northern neighbors get the brunt of the jet stream; this year, it’s all ours. “That’s not unprecedented, but it hasn’t happened for awhile.”

By Monday, we can expect 4 to 6 inches more of rain in the coastal mountains and 1.5 to 2 inches in San Jose, Santa Clara Valley, Livermore, and Concord. While local major rivers like the Salinas, Guadalupe and San Francisquito aren’t expected to flood, smaller creeks like Gilroy’s Uvas Creek and Morgan Hill’s Llagas Creek are likely to crest their banks, Garcia said.

On Sunday night, wind may gust as high as 41 miles per hour in Half Moon Bay to 30 mph in San Jose and 21 mph in Livermore.

Small creeks may flood across much of Northern California, supersaturated soils could lead to more mudslides and landslides, and pressure will build in the state’s vast water storage and conveyance infrastructure, such as Oroville Dam, which “is starting to crack under the strain – in some cases, quite literally,” said climate scientist Daniel Swain of UCLA’s Institute of the Environment and Sustainability.

In Santa Clara County, Anderson Reservoir was expected to reach maximum capacity late Friday night and begin spilling over for the first time since 2006. That would not typically merit concern, but the Santa Clara Valley Water District is under orders from state and federal regulators to limit storage to 68 percent until a $400 million rebuild of the seismically vulnerable dam is done.

Precipitation has been especially remarkable across the northern Sierra, where rain and melted snow is above 200 percent of average, according to Swain.

dales wrote:

Gob wrote:Still sweltering here.

Have you considered posting in the nude?

Econoline wrote:72.7 °F in Chicago right now.

dales wrote:

Econoline wrote:72.7 °F in Chicago right now.

That could change by tomorrow

Exceptional drought’ is over in California

January 26, 2017

The absolute worst of the drought has disappeared in California.

For the first time in three years, not a single area of California is considered in “exceptional drought,” the most severe category, according to a U.S. government estimate released Thursday. All told, 48.6 percent of the state is completely drought free, the weekly U.S. Drought Monitor reported, up from 42 percent last week. A year ago, only 5 percent of California had escaped the drought.

The closely watched Drought Monitor, an analysis conducted by the National Drought Mitigation Center and key federal agencies, was released as political pressure mounts on Gov. Jerry Brown to end his statewide drought emergency declaration and its restrictions on water usage.

The board of one of the largest water agencies in the state, the San Diego County Water Authority, passed a resolution Thursday declaring the drought over in its region and urging Brown to let the statewide emergency expire “based on improved hydrologic conditions.” San Diego officials argued, as have their counterparts in Sacramento, that they risk losing credibility with customers if they continue to broadcast a drought emergency. The agency made its declaration even as the Drought Monitor continues to list the San Diego region as being in moderate to severe drought.

The Drought Monitor’s latest findings follow two weeks of off-and-on heavy precipitation that intensified one of the wettest winters in years. The Sierra Nevada snowpack is 189 percent of normal. [it's now over 200%] Sacramento has received nearly as much rain already than it normally does the entire season. California’s two largest reservoirs, Shasta and Oroville, have far more water in storage than usual for late January.

Read more here: http://www.sacbee.com/news/state/califo ... rylink=cpy