Since the winter solstice, rain and windstorms have swept across Sonoma County and taken their toll, felling a number of branches and even trees that have kept the city’s Public Works Department—and its homeowners—busy and then some.
An oak tree on Dec. 24 lost a limb that crashed into the city’s Holiday Tree (though its lights were repaired before the day ended). The entire tree itself was removed a couple of days later, in a public display of arboreal maintenance that became a spectacle in the Plaza.
That same morning two trees on Lincoln Street fell on two cars on University Street, creating a Rorschach of branches and fiberglass, soon wrapped by a road crew’s yellow ribbon.
A week later the wind picked up early on New Year’s Day, taking down a stately (if leaning) Norway spruce at the corner of Manor Court.
Then Monday, Jan. 5, dawned with a drenching rain. At about 12:33pm, the National Weather Service issued a flood warning for much of western Sonoma County, including Healdsburg, Windsor and west to the coast, and a simultaneous flood warning for northern Marin County as well.
The affected area was described as “west of a line from Cotati to Healdsburg in the Sonoma coastal range.” According to the warning, “Doppler radar and automated rain gauges indicated heavy rain. Minor flooding is already occurring in the advisory area.”
In total, over 5 inches of rain fell in Healdsburg during the series of storms, which brought increased water to Lake Sonoma Reservoir but caused localized flooding—including in Healdsburg, where Foss Creek overflowed onto Grove Street at North Street, inundating the intersection where City Hall is situated.
Foss Creek seems to be the most risky waterway in town, regularly flooding the Grove Street area and farther north near the community center. Despite at least two retention basins from Parkland Farms and at Grove Street, downstream flooding is a recurring headache for City Hall staff.
“We’re looking at flood monitoring,” said City Manager Jeff Kay, who spent much of Monday shuffling employees and vehicles out of the flooding city offices at 401 Grove St. “We applied for a grant to get some money for better flood monitoring technology. The idea would be to check water levels and other remote digital information that could put us in a much better position to be able to anticipate and respond to storm levels.” Such a program could cost about $100,000, a relatively small amount in the city budget.
While in rare cases the Russian River has overflowed its banks near the Healdsburg Memorial Bridge, the current storm did not raise river levels to a flood stage of 20 feet, falling about three feet short just before sunrise Tuesday.
The Healdsburg Museum has a news archive, where a search using the term “flood” turned up over 230 results that included photos. The years 1937, 1940, 1957 and 1964 occur frequently, along with more recent years.
Who can forget 2014—when the Safeway parking lot flooded so deeply that people went shopping in their kayaks? In other words, this is almost “winter as usual” in Healdsburg.
