Heavy rain and high elevation heavy snow is likely to impact the West Coast and more specifically central/northern California over the next week. Latest precipitation forecast through early next week depicts widespread 10"+ amounts for parts of California.
A New Year's Eve deluge claimed the life of one person, prompted the evacuation of more than 1,000 inmates in a county jail and washed away a section of a levee system that protects mostly rural farmland.
In south Sacramento County, crews rushed to repair a 200 foot section of a roughly 34 mile levee system along the Cosumnes River that protects just over 53 square miles of mostly vineyards and cattle ranches. Crews hope to finish repairs before the next storm is forecasted to hit on Wednesday. If they can’t, they’ll seal whatever progress they have made with plastic and sandbags and hope for the best.
A weather phenomenon known as an “atmospheric river” dumped up to 5 inches of rain in the Sacramento region and up to a foot of snow in the mountains on Saturday, said Eric Kurth, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service.
State highway workers spent the holiday weekend clearing heavy snow that was stopping traffic on major highways through the Sierra Nevada.
Another storm is forecasted to hit the area this weekend, with forecasters anticipating up to 2 inches of rain in the valley and snow of up to 2 feet in the mountains.
Highway 99 near Sacramento was closed for much of the day Sunday, but has since reopened in both directions.
In the San Francisco Bay area, a National Weather Service forecast warned Wednesday’s storm could cause widespread flooding and power outages, calling it “truly a brutal system that we are looking at and needs to be taken seriously.”
Repeated storms make floods more likely. “It’s something we’re going to be keeping a close eye on, especially with elevated stream levels (and) saturated ground from our previous storm,” Kurth said. “With what we’re going to be getting ... adding on to that previous storm is really the big issue.”
Rainfall in downtown San Francisco hit 5.46 inches on New Year’s Eve, making it the second-wettest day on record, behind a November 1994 deluge, the National Weather Service said.
In the state’s capital, Sacramento crews cleared toppled trees from roads and sidewalks.
The rain was welcomed in drought-parched California as the past three years have been the state's driest on record. Most of the state's major reservoirs were still well below their historical averages. The one exception was Folsom Lake near Sacramento, which was at 153% of its historical average on Sunday.
Shasta Dam the largest dam in the state, has had the smallest increases while Folsom Dam the smallest on the graph below has seen the largest increases.
