While rain continued Thursday, and is not expected to ease up
much until Saturday
– and only temporarily then – the latest storm pales compared to
Wednesday’s howling gale.
While rain continued Thursday, and is not expected to ease up much until Saturday – and only temporarily then – the latest storm pales compared to Wednesday’s howling gale.
Residents spent Wednesday watching the skies and thinking about building arks as the area was deluged with rain and creeks overflowed into yards and threatened houses.
Only one house – at 85 W. Second St. at Del Monte Avenue – and apartments on the south side of Bisceglia Avenue, just north of the Post Office, flooded. City crews worked to sandbag the residences.
Highs have been in the mid-50s, lows around 40 degrees but are expected to warm up to a high of 60 degrees through the weekend. Today’s chance of rain should give way to clearing skies Saturday. Sunday and Monday could be wet again.
Wednesday’s storm – said to be the strongest of the season by the National Weather Service – had blown through Morgan Hill by 1:30 p.m., easing the flood problems. Skies remained gray and blustery but no more rain fell and waters began to recede.
Rain, heavy at times, continued off and on through the night.
Between 8 a.m. and 1 p.m. official rain gauge at the corporation yard on Edes Court registered only 1-inch of rain.
“Either the gauge is broken or it was sitting under a hole in the storm clouds,” said Jim Ashcraft, public works director.
Ashcraft said he had seldom seen so much rain in so short a time, certainly more than an inch.
There was no hole in the clouds over Joanne and Ed Rife’s house in Holiday Lake Estates. Their gauge, which Ed tends scrupulously, showed a rainfall of 2.2 inches for the storm by 10:30 a.m. Thursday and 2.25 inches by 4 p.m.
Seasonal levels reached 16.30 inches by Thursday morning and rain was still falling. Ashcraft said 17 inches is normal. The official gauge at the bus yard is monitored by the Santa Clara Valley Water District.
Ashcraft said he witnessed an event he had not seen before in his eight and one-half years in the city. The eight northernmost Butterfield Channel sections overflowed their earthen dikes into the next lower basin – even eroding one between Main and Dunne.
“Never before had more than one overflowed,” Ashcraft said. “It was visually impressive.”
City Public Works crews were stretched thin as workers unplugged drains, set out “Flooded” signs and delivered truckloads of sandbags to sodden neighborhoods. Hill Road between East Main and East Dunne avenues was closed, causing traffic complications when Live Oak High School let out for the day.
The high school’s parking lot had its own problems. Drains were reported to have been plugged up with plastic bags and students were called from class to move their cars to other parking lots or to Half Road.
School district officials said they and the maintenance department were investigating whether the clogged drains were a natural occurrence or caused by vandalism.
Elsewhere in the city there was less control.
Emergency services handled several accidents. A single-car accident about noon damaged one traffic light at Dunne/Hill and caused minor injury to the driver.
PG&E spokesman Jeff Smith said, generally, Morgan Hill escaped the power outages and downed trees experience in other areas, most notably Santa Cruz, Monterey and Carmel.
“Morgan Hill escaped any big problems,” Smith said. “In Gilroy 16 customers lost power between 8:30 a.m. and 1:30 p.m. but, in all, 87 percent of PG&E area outages were restored by 4 p.m.”
It was much the same in Gilroy though that city had its usual problems.
Gilroyans know it’s truly raining when Silva’s Crossing closes. The portion of Miller Avenue near Christmas Hill Park that crosses Uvas Creek closed at 2:30 p.m. after the muddy, swirling waters of the creek inched over the road. City staff had kept an eye on the rain-soaked area all morning, said Carla Ruigh, operations services manager for the city.
Morgan Hill’s La Jolla and La Mar drives behind Nob Hill grocery turned into the La Jolla/La Mar rivers when three feet of water overflowed Little Llagas Creek, flooding at least one vehicle parked on the street and stranding a motorist who had to be rescued. Houses in that area are build up from street level and largely remained dry.
Another trouble spot, West Second Street, flooded as usual but neighbors were ready for it. They banded together, as always, to sandbag their own and others’ homes. Brad Jones, who lives on West Second had a measure of how deep the water was.
“My pants legs are wet up to about 9-inches,” Jones said. “Water was about that far over the curb.” He said sandbags mostly kept water from entering air vents and garages.
“We keep some sandbags around from storm to storm,” he said, “though two neighbors took their trucks and loaded up sandbags for everyone on the street to use. We always work together,” he said.
Public Works delivered a dump truckload of sandbags just as residents finished up.
“But we were grateful that they thought of us,” Jones said.
Santa Clara Valley Water District spokesman Mike DiMarco was relieved that the flooding wasn’t worse.
“Quite frankly we were really lucky,” DiMarco said. “Reservoirs were only half full and the creeks weren’t swollen. We could have really had a problem.”
The public can pick up free sandbags, provided by the water district, at two locations in Morgan Hill: Corporation Yard 100 Edes Court, west from Monterey Road, and at El Toro Fire Station, 18300 Old Monterey Road just west of the Monterey Road railroad underpass. Details: www.valleywater.org
