Late-season storm left Sonoma County drenched but mostly unscathed

The clouds parted Saturday morning after a two-day rainstorm drenched the North Bay with much-needed rain, flooding some lowland roads but otherwise causing no major problems in areas burned in the October fires and vulnerable to mudslides.

The late-season storm was a soaker but didn’t unfold with the type of intensity that might have created greater flooding, erosion and mudslides, in part because its trajectory shifted southward, Santa Rosa Assistant Fire Marshal Paul Lowenthal said. The city had extra personnel on duty for the storm’s brunt, expected about 11 p.m. Friday through Saturday morning.

But the storm “pushed through too fast and never posed any issues in Santa Rosa,” Lowenthal said.

Since Thursday, weather gauges at the Sonoma County Charles M. Schulz Airport recorded a total of 3.44 inches of rainfall, with the last drops recorded about 10 a.m. Saturday, according to National Weather Service meteorologist Steve Anderson.

Normal rainfall for the region for the month of April is 1.8 inches, so the storm delivered on that count.

“That is quite a bit of rainfall for the month of April,” Anderson said of the storm total.

Rainfall for this season now stands at about 73 percent of normal, up about 10 percentage points from a week ago. Records taken at the Sonoma County Airport show 23.83 inches of rain have fallen since Oct. 1, compared to an average total of 32.75 inches, according to Duane Dykema, another National Weather Service meteorologist.

In Petaluma, 3.98 inches had fallen since Thursday; Sonoma received 3.82 inches. In one of Sonoma County’s wettest sites, Venado, in the hills west of Healdsburg, an official rain meter measured 6.04 inches of rain.

Sonoma County fire and medical dispatchers said most of the road closures from flooding occurred in normal trouble spots in lowland areas of the west county.

A flooded Joy Road was expected to remain closed after the roadway became impassible Friday.

Other road closures included Todd Road between Llano Road and Old Gravenstein Highway, Green Valley Road near Atascadero Creek, Valley Ford Road at Highway 1 and Roblar Road at Valley Ford Road. For a complete list, visit roadconditions.sonoma-county.org.