GUERNEVILLE (CBS SF) – While torrential rains that have pounded the North Bay have subsided, the flooded Russian Rivers left parts of several communities in Sonoma County submerged under water Wednesday evening. Along the Russian River in Sonoma County, officials said the towns of Guerneville and Monte Rio were completely isolated, as all roads leading to the communities were flooded. At around 10 p.m., the river crested at 45.31 feet, 13 feet over flood stage of 32 feet. 3,600 people are under evacuation orders from two dozen communities along the river, stretching from Jenner to Wilson Grove. The most significant damage was in Guerneville, where water from the Russian River has flooded dozens of houses, turning roads into streams and making boats the only possible mode of transportation. “The current situation in Guerneville, we have deputies there helping people,” said Sonoma County Sheriff Mark Essick. “Evacuation time has passed. We cant evacuate any more [residents] because the water has risen and the roads are impassable.” “Looks like it’s going to let up for a couple days, then another system is coming,” said one Forestville resident of the weather. “Hopefully it won’t be that bad.” This had been a long day for the riverside community just outside of Guerneville. “This is one of the many sections of Trenton Road, this is a very low spot, and it’s one of the first places that floods,” explained Craig Cochrane, who, with his wave Jane, was paddling over the submerged portion of the community. “Many of the houses, due to the flooding, have been raised, sometimes two full stories to be above the largest floods.” At around 12:30 p.m., a CHP helicopter landed on Main Street in Guerneville so officers could fly a woman having a serious medical issue out of the flooded area. “Yeah, I’ve never seen anything like this in the 30 years that I’ve been living around this area,” said Sonoma County resident Adalfo Membrila. “This is incredible, a lot of rain, a lot of water, a lot of flooding.” Across western Sonoma County, the water just kept rising Wednesday. And that left just about everyone here trying to make their way around it. “Came through this direction on the way to work in the road closed right after me,” said one local. And it wasn’t just low-lying areas. If you made your way into the hills, it was a different kind of road block. Signs of the storm aftermath could be seen with slides and fallen trees found in nearly every direction. KPIX found one of those slides on Mays Canyon Road, where neighbors were checking out the damage when all of a sudden it started to give way again. “Yeah I’ve never seen it slide,” one neighbor said. “I’ve been here since ’98, I’ve never seen this kind of thing like this on Mays Canyon Road.” Redwood Road in Napa County was closed Wednesday evening because of a major landslide, Napa County emergency officials said. As of 6:59 p.m. the road was closed in the 3500 block, about a half mile south of Mt. Veeder Road, because of the slide. County emergency officials said the road is closed indefinitely. Over in the town of Rio Nido along the Russian River, entire neighborhoods could be seen submerged under the murky floodwater. Near Sebastopol, flood waters have swamped other Sonoma County neighborhoods. Highway 12, the road that connects the town to Santa Rosa and the 101, was underwater and been closed all day. Crews were spending their day rescuing stubborn residents who refused to leave their homes. One man, who refused to evacuate until he was surrounded by water was suffering from hypothermia by the time firefighters reached him. “We’re getting ready to go into Flynn Street. There’s someone trapped in their house,” said Steve Thibodeau with the Sebastopol Fire Department. “They just don’t want to leave, and we can’t force them to leave. But once the water gets into their houses, they’re going to have to leave.” “They just think they can stay in their houses and water is kind of a slow death and it just keeps coming up,” he said. 15 people were pulled out by boat, others on the backs of their rescuers. The total number of evacuees kept rising as the river did. The Laguna de Santa Rosa wetland complex seemed to swallow Sebastopol whole. Cars and homes are underwater while streets were crowded with kayakers. Sebastopol resident Christina Mendieta and her two children had to be rescued after trying to stay in their home a little too long. “Never have I seen it like this. It’s scary,” said Mendieta. “I thought it would rise a bit and we’d be fine.” “We’ve done all we can do. We have sandbags and everything is up off the floor,” said Melissa Minton, the general manager at the Community Market, even as the business was taking on water. Sebastopol has been through floods like this in ’86 and ’95, but Minton has only been a resident for five years. The steady march of the rising river caught her off guard. “We don’t have power. We’re going to lose all our perishable items,” said Minton. “What’s insurance going to do? How long is it going to take? When can we open again for business?” The rapidly rising water forced the guests at the Farmhouse Inn in Forestville to evacuate Wednesday morning. Stranded guests told KPIX about their struggle to get to safety. Guests were forced to leave the inn through a window and above a giant, newly-formed pond. Nina Sheehan and her husband Patrick were in Sonoma County visiting one of their daughters. They had planned to head to San Francisco Wednesday anyway, but with danger from the rising Russian River increasing by the minute, they knew they had to leave sooner than planned. “These things are fast changing and you do need to pay attention,” said Nina Sheehan. “This is the third time we’ve been evacuated over the last three or four months in different parts of California, but that’s life,” added her husband Patrick. All the guests at the Farmhouse Inn had to be evacuated. The owners of the inn told KPIX they called rideshare companies to pick people up. We are getting some pretty incredible pictures & video coming in from CHP Air Ops Golden Gate Division of the #flooding along the #RussianRiver. The helicopter crews are assisting with rescues. Here someone uses a kayak as a SUP to get through #flood waters. @KPIXtv pic.twitter.com/u8oo6hc5MF — Katie Nielsen (@KatieKPIX) February 27, 2019 The Sonoma County Board of Supervisors has declared a local emergency caused by heavy rain and flooding that forced evacuations from the Russian River area. The declaration asks Gov. Gavin Newsom to proclaim a state of emergency that would waive regulations that could hinder response and recovery efforts and provide assistance and relief programs for damage caused by this year’s storms and flooding. County officials estimate 3,600 residents were included in the evacuation notices issued at 5 p.m. Tuesday. KPIX 5 reporter Jackie Ward and her photographer attempted to report from Guerneville early Wednesday morning, but were unable to reach the town due to the flooding. Well, we TRIED to get to #Guerneville this morning, but got stopped at Old River Road and Scenic Road because of flooding. Set up in #Forestville now where we are watching cars get swallowed by rising water levels. pic.twitter.com/sKyMBT1VhU — Jackie Ward (@JackieKPIX) February 27, 2019 The CHP Air Ops helicopter assisted in the Wednesday rescue of at least two people trapped by flood waters. Emergency crews said a 59-year-old man who spent the night in the water needed to be rescued. He is expected to be okay. The river at Guerneville is expected to crest at 46 feet Wednesday night, which would make it the sixth highest on record and the highest the river has been since 1997. According to the National Weather Service, the river is not expected to be below the flood stage of 32 feet until Friday. Flood Warning for the Napa River has been cancelled but continues for the Russian.https://t.co/Ze9moimo74 #cawx — NWS Bay Area (@NWSBayArea) February 28, 2019<doc-sep>Sonoma County released an interactive flood map on Tuesday of the Russian River, which is expected to exceed its banks this evening and inundate businesses and homes with water. The river is forecast to crest at 46.1 feet at 11 p.m. Wednesday; that's 14.1 feet above flood stage. The map is a handy tool for identifying road and school closures, sand bag pickup locations, and areas with PG&E power outages. You can also access live readings of river levels at numerous gauges along the water way.<doc-sep>A storm in northern California dumped so much water on the region that roads turned into moats, isolating two California towns. It’s the kind of storm that experts project might become more extreme as climate change continues — which could mean a future of even worse flooding for California. Over the past few days, parts of northern California have been drenched with record levels of rain. North of San Francisco, the Russian River rolled over its banks to surround the Sonoma County towns of Guerneville and Monte Rio, The Press Democrat reports. Yesterday, thousands of people were told to evacuate. By today, it was too late for some: “Guerneville is officially an island,” the Sonoma County sheriff announced on Facebook. “You will not be able to get into or out of town without a boat today.” The storm, which has tapered off, is an atmospheric river. These bands of warm moist air roll in off the Pacific, hit the coastal mountains, and cool down — showering California with rainfall and snow every winter. “It dumped amazing amounts of rainfall that have sadly created serious flooding along the Russian river and some other rivers,” says Marty Ralph, director of the Center for Western Weather and Water Extremes at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography. Russian River keeps rising. Photos from Guerneville. See interactive flood map and more info at https://t.co/3E8qX9nNBl. Be prepared to evacuate if you live near the river. pic.twitter.com/ARtWup3EeG — Sonoma Sheriff (@sonomasheriff) February 26, 2019 That’s because the atmospheric river stalled, lingering over already wet soil and swollen rivers and increasing flooding in the process. “That firehose just got stuck on Sonoma county and sat there,” says Daniel Swain, a climate scientist at UCLA’s Institute of the Environment and Sustainability. These floods show why atmospheric rivers are double-edged swords for California. They drop between 25 and 50 percent of the thirsty state’s precipitation over just a few days every year. But they’re also to blame for an estimated 81 percent of levee breaches in California’s Central Valley, according to a 2015 report. And in 2017, back-to-back atmospheric rivers accelerated damage to the crumbling Oroville dam spillway. To capture that balance between benefit and hazard, Ralph proposed a new scale published earlier this month in the Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society. It ranks atmospheric rivers based on the amount of water they’re carrying, and how long they linger. The scale ranges from a “weak” category 1 that mostly brings helpful precipitation to an “exceptional” category 5 that’s far more hazardous than helpful. Based on early measurements, Ralph estimates that the one that just drenched California falls around a category 3 or 4 — somewhere between strong and extreme. At Pocket Canyon Road. Our Marine Unit is in the Guerneville area to help rescue people. pic.twitter.com/ptSre6689L — Sonoma Sheriff (@sonomasheriff) February 27, 2019 While Ralph can’t speak to the effects of climate change on this particular atmospheric river, he says we may be able to expect worse atmospheric rivers as climate change continues. Warmer air can hold more water vapor, which means more rainfall. But winds, which are also important for atmospheric river formation, are expected to slacken on average as temperatures at the poles climb. “These two trends compete with each other in terms of the long-term projections,” Ralph says. “One says weaker, one says stronger.” That could mean somewhat fewer atmospheric rivers in general, but it could also mean that some of the ones we do see are likely to be bigger, and stronger, a recent study from Ralph’s lab predicts. “An average AR has about 25 Mississippi Rivers worth of water vapor transport going on,” Ralph says. “A stronger AR would be like adding additional Mississippis worth of water vapor flow.” UPDATE WED 1:45pm: The River keeps rising! This is the Guerneville Bridge (Hwy. 116). Stay safe. Posted by Sonoma Sheriff on Wednesday, February 27, 2019 That’s likely to bring more flooding, particularly as rising temperatures mean more rainfall that can swell rivers, and less snow that sticks to the slopes. “The extremes will get more extreme,” says Kelly Mahoney, a research meteorologist with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. The potential for devastating floods is something California’s water managers will have to account for as the state’s reservoirs juggle the contradictory jobs of flood protection and water storage. “People have been grappling with this for for a while — the feast or famine, flood or drought paradigm we’ve seen over many years,” Mahoney says. “And the fact is that the projections are for that pattern to continue.”<doc-sep>
Guerneville in Sonoma County became a virtual island Wednesday as the Russian River experienced the worst flooding in a quarter-century. The major roads in and out of the community are completely flooded. Officials said those who chose to stay in their homes could be stuck there for days. Here are some dramatic images: I feel like I'm living in a perpetual state of disaster here in California. Floods are eerie at night, as Guerneville and the rest of the Russian River Area brace for more flooding. @NorthBayNews @NWSBayArea #cawx #AtmosphericRiver #CAstorm pic.twitter.com/sCn4Kx8h7p — Kent Porter (@kentphotos) February 27, 2019 Rising waters The river was forecast to exceed flood stage — 32 feet — at 6 p.m. Tuesday. By early Wednesday the river had swollen to 40.5 feet. Forecasters predict the waterway, which cuts through several Sonoma County communities, will reach its highest level at 46.1 feet — more than 14 feet above flood stage — late Wednesday before slowly receding on Thursday. All roads in, out of Guerneville closed due to flooding https://t.co/KuwYqINyoV pic.twitter.com/iRd5F4A6Y2 — David Cantu (@duckm4st3r) February 27, 2019 A history of flooding One of the worst floods in Guerneville was in 1995. That year, the river crested at about 48 feet, 16 feet above flood stage. The Times reported then that there were mass rescues: “Many of those forced to flee Guerneville said they were caught off guard by the river’s rapid rise…. Some left by small craft, floating past debris as they sought higher ground. Others boarded 2½-ton National Guard transport trucks that drove through the floodwaters. One even hitched a ride on a trash bin floating by.”