Boats not required, rain gear optional

The rain isn’t likely to go away today, but there will be a
short drying out period before the next system moves in if
predictions from the National Weather Service, San Francisco Bay
Area/Monterey Forecast Office are correct.
“Thursday we are looking at about a 70 percent chance of rain,”
Forecaster Diana Henderson said Tuesday. “We have a series of
little systems pulsing their way through,” she said, noting
isolated showers are expected Thursday night and partly cloudy
skies on Friday and Saturday. There is a slight chance of rain by
Saturday evening, with another system working its way in Saturday
night or early Sunday morning, she said, noting this next system is
expected to continue at least through Monday.
The storms, coming out of the Pacific North West, should bring
rainfall up to about normal for this time of year, according to
Henderson.
As of 4 p.m. Monday, season to date rainfall (July 1 through
Dec. 17) for the Santa Rosa area was 6.61 inches, bringing total
rainfall in the area up to about 72 percent of normal for this time
of year, according to Henderson. “Normally by this time of year
there would be 9.17 inches,” she said.
“This was the big rain maker,” Don McEnhill, riverkeeper for the
Russian Riverkeeper, said of the system that poured down on the
county Monday and Tuesday.
But he wants more.
“We desperately need the rain. This is really going to make an
impact on Lake Mendocino. We need that lake to fill up this rain
year. If it doesn’t we will certainly be looking at some more
conservation measures this summer,” he said Tuesday. “Lake
Mendocino is inching upward right now and we are hoping to see it
leap upward tonight as everything starts to drain. Certainly,
looking at the river levels, it’s up about 10 times where it was
(Monday) morning, so we should see a real good amount of water into
the lake.”
Also as of Tuesday afternoon, the Russian River in Hopland was
up about a foot and expected to rise over the course of the
day.
The river on Tuesday morning in the Cloverdale area was flowing
at 100 cubic feet per second (cfs). Two hours later it had already
hit 1000 cfs, according to McEnhill. “I would guess we are going to
see it go up to potentially 5000 cfs in the next 24 hours. All the
rural areas are good and saturated so everything falling last night
and today should be mostly running off,” he said.
“At Hacienda Bridge, it hasn’t quite responded yet,” McEnhill
said, also at around noon on Tuesday when the river level had
reached about 4 feet. “I would expect that to go up at least 5 feet
more in the next 24 hours, and this means wonderful things for the
steelhead which are thinking about running up stream,” the
riverkeeper said. “I would say it’s going to get to about 10 feet
by Wednesday at noon. Off the top of my head Š the information is
kind of early right now Š but I would say we are going to see it go
from about 300 or 400 cfs to over 5000 cfs at Hacienda.” As of
Wednesday morning, he reported it at 2,000 cfs and steady.
The good news for river residents is that boats during this
storm are not required; rain gear is optional.
“Other than urban area nuisance flooding, most of the streams
will stay within the banks,” McEnhill said, adding, “They are
talking about snow Thursday night at 2000 feet.”
The not so good news, according to McEnhill, is most big rains
tend to “move a lot of the urban storm water pollutants from
parking lots into the waterways. Š Construction sites leak sediment
out into the creeks.”