Soggy morning leads to area crashes, drier days ahead

It may have looked and felt like rain Wednesday morning and cars were crashing all over the place due to wet roadways, but officially the weather was considered drizzle, experts said.

“It’s not rain, unfortunately,” said Bob Benjamin, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service.

Whatever you call it, it was wet enough to be a factor in a slew of mostly minor injury or non-injury crashes throughout the region Wednesday morning.

It also came on the first day of school for many area students, bringing added traffic to the mix.

“It’s been busy. Lots of crashes,” said CHP Officer Steve Fricke. “We’ve had five or six in the interchange of (highways) 12 and 101, primarily vehicle spin outs.”

There were seven crashes in Santa Rosa from about 8-10:30 a.m., including a head-on crash downtown on Mendocino Avenue.

The Mendocino Avenue crash was at Seventh Street and temporarily closed a few blocks of the avenue for the crash to be cleared.

Driver Jason Monroy, 21, said he was on his way to class at Santa Rosa Junior College when he started to turn his Isuzu Rodeo from Seventh Street onto Mendocino.

His car started to spin and while he tried to correct it, he crashed straight into a white work truck, the Santa Rosa resident said.

His car hit a Wiggins Electric pickup, whose driver was taken to Kaiser Permanente Medical Center with minor or moderate injuries. Monroy had a bloody nose but otherwise appeared to be unhurt.

“I just lost control,” Monroy said.

Wednesday’s wet weather was expected to taper off by Thursday, with fog in the mornings but not such significant moisture, Benjamin said.

Afternoon temperatures through the weekend should be in the upper 70s - still below average for afternoons in August, he said.

You can reach Staff Writer Randi Rossmann at 521-5412 or randi.rossmann@pressdemocrat.com.