‘State of panic’ grips Northern California as atmospheric river moves in; widespread flooding, heavy snow expected

Via LA Times

The first band of what officials predict will be the most powerful storm in a decade moved into Northern California on Saturday, with officials warning of widespread flooding and epic snowfall.

“People are definitely in a state of panic right now,” said El Dorado County sheriff’s Sgt. Todd Hammitt. “We’re getting a lot of calls asking if we’re going to be able to deal with everything. It’s the general pandemonium of not knowing what’s coming.”

Up to 12 inches of rain is expected below 8,500 feet, and massive amounts of snow — up to 6 feet — above that elevation across the Sierra Nevada. A colder storm two days behind will drop yet more heavy snow. The rain moved in late Friday and continued into Saturday morning, with the most powerful punch expected later in the day.

“We’re expecting heavy, heavy rain. It starts out as snow then turns to rain then turns to snow again,” Hammitt said. “We’re concerned about the melt increasing waterways and all the lakes.”

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Hammitt recalled storms in 1997 and 2005 when runoff overwhelmed local rivers and creeks and sent water into roads and homes, lifting some buildings off their foundations.

“We have streams, creeks, rivers. We have lakes and ponds,” Hammitt said. “Anybody near a water source could be in jeopardy depending on the severity of the storm.”

Two sinkholes have already emerged on county roads as a result of three stormy days this week. County residents have already filled 12,000 sandbags in preparation for the storm and an additional 20,000 are on the way in, Hammitt said.

“Anytime it’s Mother Nature, you have to be ready,” Hammitt said.

The region is expected to be hit Saturday, Sunday, Tuesday and Wednesday.

“It’s a once-in-10-year event,” said Zach Tolby, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Reno. “It’s the strongest storm we’ve seen in a long time, the kind of setup we look for to get significant flooding.”

Indeed, large swaths of the Bay Area, Sierra foothills, Central Coast and parts of the Sacramento Valley were under flash-flood warnings. The flood concerns have been heightened because officials fear that some of the snowfall will quickly melt due to heavy rain.

The atmospheric river, or “Pineapple Express,” will be felt across much of the state this weekend, though rain will be much heavier in the north than in the south.

“It’s going to be like buckets of water for a fairly sustained period of time,” Tolby said.

Wind gusts on mountain tops could top 130 mph in the Northern Sierra, which is typical, Tolby said. At lower elevations gusts could reach 30 or 40 mph, he said, “but that’s an average windy day for us.”

Tolby said the storm is packing the same wallop as an atmospheric river that hit Northern California a decade ago that caused $300 million in damage, according to the U.S. Geological Survey.

Angelenos may remember the 2005-06 storm because it was the first time it rained on the Rose Parade in 51 years. But Tolby, who lives in Lake Tahoe, remembers the storm differently.

“It was pretty wild. I was here in 2005 and it was definitely the hardest rain I’d ever seen. It didn’t stop for 24 hours,” he said.

This weekend’s storm could bring 36 straight hours of heavy rain from Mammoth Mountain to Susanville, Tolby said.

Below clear blue skies Friday, people in the snow-shrouded ski town of Mammoth Lakes were gleeful about the prospect of several more feet of snow.

Yet some also worried that the big, wet storm could dump so much rain and snow that it could shut down some ski runs or roads.

In preparation, snowplows were scraping icy roadways.  Excavators and snowblower operators stayed busy clearing and moving huge piles of snow. Some cars sat abandoned on the roadside or at gas stations, covered with thick blankets of snow from the most recent storm.

Outside Kittredge Sports, store manager Terry Lucian took advantage of the clear weather to shovel away some of the mounds of snow that had built up outside the entrance.

“If the storm comes in as wet as they’re talking about, it’ll make for a big mess,” the 60-year-old said as he scooped icy snow off the entrance to the A-frame building.

Lucian said recent storms definitely helped to boost business, but he worried some skiers traveling to the area this weekend could be in for disappointment if storm conditions worsen to the point that they shut down parts of Mammoth Mountain.

“Everybody wants the snow, they just don’t want it while they’re here,” the 39-year Mammoth resident said. “It’ll be a rough couple of days, but we need the water. So it’s going to be OK.”

Up north, South Lake Tahoe Mayor Austin Sass urged residents to prepare for the storm.

“If at all possible, get up on your roof and get off whatever snow you have on there because the moisture combined with the snow will be extremely heavy and we’re worried about the integrity of your roof structure,” Sass tweeted Friday.

Do not go outside Sunday or Monday, he told his constituents.

“When the snow comes mixed with the rain it’s going to be an absolute mess. So whatever you can do stay home and most importantly, stay safe,” he said.

In the mountains, the rain could pile onto the snow and trigger early snowmelt, feeding extra water into watersheds already swollen from a week of rain.

“A combination of intense rain on saturated soils will lead to excessive runoff,” the National Weather Service said in its weekend forecast.

The Carson, Truckee and Susan rivers are all expected to become overwhelmed, and the nearby communities may become increasingly isolated if the deluge triggers mud flows and rock slides.

Weather officials issued a flood watch from Saturday to Wednesday that covers much of Northern California and extends down through the Sierra to Tehachapi.

In Mono County, authorities offered sandbags to residents in preparation for the rain. In Yosemite National Park, officials announced Friday that the park will remain open through the wet weekend, but access to popular Yosemite Valley will be closed.

The town of Colfax in the Sierra Nevada, known as the turnaround town, is ready.

“It’s something we prepare for — it goes with the snow, hand in hand,” said Wes Heathcock, community services director for the tiny Placer County town, which has perhaps one of the most used Interstate 80 on/off ramps in Northern California when it is a snow day.

When snow conditions become too treacherous, the California Highway Patrol typically closes Interstate 80 at Colfax, as it did Wednesday during a snowstorm that also brought a car-semi collision. Perched at an elevation of 2,400 feet, Colfax bills itself as “above the fog, below the snow.”

The options for stranded travelers are slim in the Old West railroad town, whose most famous mention is a passing reference in Jules Verne’s “Around the World in 80 Days.” Even Phileas Fogg did not stop.

There is a Starbucks and a single motel.

“They’re welcome to spend some tax money in Colfax, but generally you’ll see they’ll trickle back down, try to locate hotels a little closer to the [Sacramento] Valley,” Heathcock said.

Colfax gears up for the die-hards, travelers who believe the solution to snow-blocked passes is to find another route to the same location.

“We all have this wonderful tool called GPS now,” Heathcock said.

From Colfax, California Highway 174 makes a long northerly loop to the narrow, hairpin turns of Highway 20, eventually depositing drivers into the thick. They hit Interstate 80 at Yuba Pass, just before Donner Summit.

During Wednesday’s storm, the city’s public works crew joined the sheriff and the CHP to stand along that road and ward off drivers seeking the bypass.

Wednesday’s storm dropped up to 2 feet of snow in less than 24 hours in the Tahoe basin, at times coming down at more than 2 inches an hour.

The Sierra Avalanche Center reported a slight improvement in backcountry conditions. The risk of avalanche was lowered to “considerable” even as the threat increased of historically large avalanches caused by slabs of snowpack as thick as 8 feet above a weak layer of ice laid down by a mid-December rain.

Near Lake Tahoe on Thursday, two skiers were caught in an avalanche that closed a local highway. But they were not injured, officials said.

Sierra residents are preparing for a third onslaught over the weekend, bringing up to 12 inches of rain below 8,500 feet, and more snow above that. A fourth storm system is forecast to roll across Northern California two days after that.

After the weekend storm, another rain-making system is expected to hit Northern California on Tuesday.

The storm moving through Southern California was significantly smaller than the one in the north. But it still caused problems.

Rain-slicked roads were clogged with commuters after a big rig jackknifed on the eastbound 60 Freeway in East Los Angeles, forcing authorities to shut down five lanes. In Burbank, several lanes were blocked after a semi-truck jackknifed across north and southbound lanes of the 5 Freeway.

By midmorning, firefighters rescued a man who was stranded on an island of branches and brush in the rain-swollen Los Angeles River near Fletcher Drive in Silver Lake, said Brian Humphrey, a spokesman for the Los Angeles Fire Department.

Though the rain subsided Thursday afternoon, the problems kept coming. Crews were forced to temporarily close the northbound 710 Freeway north of the 5 Freeway to replace concrete slabs damaged by the weather, the CHP said. Traffic backed up for seven miles, and the closure lasted more than four hours.

For all the problems the storms may cause, it will bring more good news for California’s six-year drought. Officials have said steady rain in Northern California the last few months has filled reservoirs and increased the once-anemic snowpack.

They emphasize the storms won’t end the drought. But if the rains keep up for spring, they could make a major dent.