Marin absorbs storm deluge with more rain ahead
Marin residents and work crews grappled Thursday with the aftermath of a storm that left tens of thousands of customers without electricity and flooded roads throughout the county.
The Pacific Gas & Electric Co. reported more than 18,000 customers without power around the county in the hours following a vicious storm that raked Marin with driving rain, lightning and hurricane-like winds that ripped down power lines from Sausalito to Novato and much of West Marin.
The largest pockets of power outages were restored or set for restoration by late Thursday night, but hundreds of residents still had no estimated restoration time as of Thursday evening.
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Most schools remained open Thursday, except in the Ross Valley, where the school district reported that White Hill Middle School and Manor Elementary School in Fairfax were closed due to outages.
The National Weather Service reported a gust of 101 mph at Pablo Point, a 937-foot elevation east of Bolinas. Brayden Murdock, a meteorologist, said other gusts recorded in rural Marin topped 90 mph.
Rainfall totals for the 48 hours ending Thursday evening included 2.9 inches on Mount Tamalpais, 2.27 inches in Kentfield, 2.59 inches in Woodacre and 2.51 inches in Novato, according to the National Weather Service.
In Mill Valley, Miller Avenue was closed late Thursday morning due to flooding but reopened by evening, according to police there.
In San Anselmo, where residents keep one eye on the town’s network of creeks during rainstorms, breaks in the rainfall kept the waterways from creeping too far out of their banks, although some homes did have water coming inside, said Mayor Steve Burdo.
“I’ve seen them much higher than I have the last few days,” Burdo said. But with several more days of rain in the forecast, he said, “we’re not out of the woods yet.”
In West Marin, the high tide on Thursday morning pulled several feet of sand off Stinson Beach, but dog walkers, beachcombers and surfers had returned by the afternoon, when the sun began poking through the clouds and fog.
Several miles of Highway 1 were closed between Stinson Beach and Muir Beach after a rockslide in the area, according to the California Highway Patrol and the county administration.
Downed trees also closed several roads, according to the Marin County Department of Public Works, including another nearby stretch of Highway 1 between Point Reyes Station and Bolinas. That section was reopened by Thursday evening.
Nicasio Valley Road was closed between Sir Francis Drake Boulevard and Lucas Valley Road. The section of Lucas Valley east of Nicasio Valley was shut down to Big Rock trail. It reopened Thursday evening. Bolinas-Fairfax Road was completely closed all day and remained closed Thursday evening.
Southern Marin also saw trouble when the storm knocked three boats loose from the anchorage on Richardson Bay near Sausalito overnight, including one with an elderly man living on board “who was not physically capable of managing the vessel under the circumstances,” said Jim Malcolm, harbormaster at the Richardson’s Bay Regional Agency.
The resident “refused to disembark his vessel,” even at the prompting of those onboard an RBRA boat, a Marin County Fire Department vessel and a San Francisco Fire Department boat, Malcolm said.
The boats were pushed north towards Tiburon and wound up “in the northern reaches of the bay,” Malcolm said.
The RBRA and one of its contractors towed two of the boats back to their anchorages Thursday morning, including the occupied one, and the owner of the third boat recovered it and brought it back, Malcolm said. There were no injuries, either to the resident or rescuers, he said.
The National Weather Service issued a high surf warning for the county’s coast and points elsewhere until 3 a.m. Friday.
“Life-threatening swimming conditions and significant beach erosion can be expected,” according to federal forecasters. “Everyone should remain out of the water … stay off of jetties, piers and other waterside infrastructure.”
Forecasters implored motorists from driving if at all possible, echoing calls from law enforcement officials from the last several days.
Meteorologists warned of a parade of storms marching across the Pacific Ocean toward Northern California promising to further inundate the Bay Area this weekend and early next week.
“Be ready for more heavy rainfall with high probability of flooding, especially as we go into early next week,” said Rick Canepa, a National Weather Service meteorologist. “Just be prepared, try to do as much storm prep as you can. I know it’s a bit relentless.”
The next round of rain should arrive late Friday evening, dropping light to moderate rain through the weekend, said Canepa. A second, more powerful atmospheric river should arrive late Sunday night — bringing even more potential for flooding to the waterlogged Bay Area.
“Everything is saturated. The soils can’t really handle hardly any more,” Canepa said.
More “atmospheric river” storms could come the following week or two, said Marty Ralph, director of the Center for Western Weather and Water Extremes at UC San Diego.
“If these storms continue to come onshore for the next two or three weeks, that will end the drought,” he said.
Bay Area News Group contributed to this report.