Bay Area Hit by Heavy Rain, Flooding and Landslides; Thousands Without Power

In Soquel, Main Street above Bates Creek was closed due to a tree down with fallen wires, and a landslide and flooding shut down San Jose Road. Some roads were also closed in Watsonville and Interlaken, according to the county.

Israel Murillo, public information officer for the California Highway Patrol office in Santa Cruz, said that as the atmospheric river pounds the region, all available officers are working and gearing up for anything else the storm brings.

“We had a vehicle that got stuck in the middle of the roadway because that individual chose to drive across flooded roads,” he said.

He also said a man was killed around 4:20 a.m. on State Route 1 and Scaroni Road when he was hit by a truck. Murillo said he can’t at this point attribute the death to the rain, but it happened during the storm.

The National Weather Service is paying close attention to any notable rise in streams and major rivers, with the Russian River at Guerneville and the San Lorenzo River having the highest chances of going into flood stage. “San Lorenzo is of particular concern given the rain so far and how flashy that basin is. The river gauge is already reporting a sharp rise,” meteorologists wrote in the weather service’s morning forecast discussion.

Stanford climate scientist Noah Diffenbaugh said this atmospheric river mirrors a more significant trend.

“There’s a trend towards the atmospheric river storms that make landfall getting warmer,” he said. “They’ll tend to produce more rainfall than snow, which creates runoff right away.”

All that water is spilling into roadways, which is causing traffic issues, especially in the North Bay, said Sgt. Andrew Barclay, public information officer with the California Highway Patrol Golden Gate Division.

“We’re seeing flooding, we’re seeing debris, and we are seeing people that are driving too fast in those conditions that are losing control and spinning out,” he said.

In San Francisco, the weather service wrote in its most recent flood advisory that “downtown is the most likely place to experience minor flooding” and that on Thursday afternoon, “flooding may transpire, mainly in areas of hilly terrain.”

The weather service forecasts high surf with waves up 45 to feet through Saturday and has issued a flood watch through Saturday evening for the entire Bay Area and Central Coast, except for regions south of Hollister. Heavy rainfall may also continue to cause landslides.

“While the rain and wind grabs everybody’s attention, the most deadly weather we have here in the Bay Area is high surf and people getting swept out to sea,” Flynn said.

Flynn said scattered showers will pick up Thursday afternoon with a chance of thunderstorms, but the rain will be spottier than what happened overnight.

“By Friday afternoon, the sun will make a triumphant return, and the rain will stop,” he said.

Meteorologists expect a weaker storm to move through the region Sunday, with light rain focused on the North Bay. Forecasters wrote that the long-range discussion for the rest of the month is “split, but the majority of solutions point to a much drier second half of February as our roller-coaster rainy season continues.”