Sunday: Storm batters North Bay toppling trees, knocking out power, inundating roadways

The North Coast, from Humboldt to Marin counties, was slammed Sunday with the second — and more powerful — of two back-to-back atmospheric rivers, which left tens of thousands of Pacific Gas & Electric Co. customers without power, drenched an already waterlogged landscape and toppled scores of trees onto roadways, homes and other buildings across the region.

Merging weather patterns in the Pacific led to a significant storm system that brought a deluge of rain and hurricane-force winds to the North Bay and areas further north.

The Sonoma County Office of Education announced Sunday evening that several schools would be closed Monday due to storm damage and power outages.

The schools include, among others, Fort Ross School, all schools in Guerneville School District, all schools in the Kashia Elementary School District and all schools in the Two Rock Union School District, according to SCOE’s website.

West Sonoma County Union High School District, Monte Rio Union School District and Mark West Union School District will be closed.

Forestville Union School District will also be closed. Schools in the Montgomery Elementary School District in Cazadero and Horicon School District in Annapolis are also closed.

All classes at Dunham Elementary School in Petaluma have also been closed.

Twin Hills School District is closing Apple Blossom School, Orchard View School, and Twin Hills Charter Middle School due to power outages, while SunRidge Charter has power and plans to open.

Mark West Union School District’s closure is due to a power outage.

The school district closures are “full closures” with no virtual or in-person classes.

From early Sunday and throughout the day, platoons of emergency responders and county road crews frantically scrambled to remove downed trees that were blocking both urban and rural roadways or that had crashed into homes.

Motorists in Santa Rosa were forced to take scenic routes for a few hours Sunday morning when a portion of Highway 101 near Todd Road was closed after a redwood was toppled by high winds and landed on a northbound SUV.

The downed tree was reported about 7:30 a.m. and the roadway was closed about 10 minutes later, according to the California Highway Patrol.

The collision trapped the driver inside. Emergency personnel, though, were eventually able to pull the driver from the vehicle and rush him to a hospital with unspecified injuries.

Highway 101 was reopened shortly before 9:30 a.m.

Coastal communities along Highway 1 were especially hit hard by strong winds that began around 3 a.m. Sunday and brought down numerous trees.

“Timber Cove got hit pretty bad,” said Sonoma County Fire District Chief Mark Heine. “Another one, Ocean Cove, Scaggs Springs Road … they’ve been getting beat up all day, and that’s due to the wind.”

Heine said Sunday’s rain has been steady, causing localized flooding in a number of locations, which prompted county officials to carry out plans to close a number of roadways by 7 p.m., including Green Valley Road.

That roadway, though, began flooding earlier than expected and was closed sooner.

Johannes J. Hoevertsz, director of the county’s public infrastructure department, said a wet winter thus far has totally saturated the local landscape. That, he said, means every bit of rain that falls is runoff, bloating local rivers, creeks and streams.

Hoevertsz and Heine pleaded for local residents to stay home Sunday and to avoid vehicle travel unless absolutely necessary.

“Stay home, avoid unnecessary trips,” Hoevertsz said.

Heine said the road closures, while inconvenient, will likely free up emergency crews.

“Hopefully by closing our roads. We don’t have to have rescues on those roads. First responders can be working elsewhere rather than rescuing people.”

By early afternoon, the number of North Coast residents who had lost power as a result of storms neared 26,000, according to Pacific Gas & Electric Co.

Residents in Marin and Napa counties were hit particularly hard by the storm, which caused 125 outages that impacted 12,127 customers as of about 2 p.m. Sunday.

Sonoma and Lake counties experienced 61 outages that left 4,760 customers without electricity, while in PG&E’s Humboldt region, which includes Humboldt and Mendocino counties, about 8,800 customers lost power.

PG&E spokeswoman Megan McFarland said the outages were caused by extreme winds and heavy rains.

Throughout the day, emergency dispatchers alerted PG&E crews of nonstop calls for downed power lines. In some cases, power lines were live or on fire, and there were also reports of several blown transformers.

McFarland said the utility has extra crews on hand but the outages have been numerous and some of the areas impacted have been difficult to access.

“We have trees falling into lines, taking down poles,” she said. “We were heavily staffed for this storm, we knew it was coming.”

Higher elevations along the coast and in the Mayacamas Mountains were expected to see gusts up to 60 mph during the storm, with the winds in Mount St. Helena expected to be as strong as 80 mph, said Roger Gass, a National Weather Service Meteorologist based in Monterey.

On the 1400 block of white Oak Drive, just outside of the Oakmont community, about seven evergreen trees came down on top of a two-story home while the owner, an elderly woman, was in the kitchen. She was uninjured.

The trees were brought down by powerful winds around 3:30 p.m., as the storm intensified in the afternoon. Virginia Boswell, a neighbor from two houses down, said she received a phone call from the distraught neighbor, who was alone.

The trees crushed much of the first floor and several trees fell into an edge of the house, damaging two corner rooms, one of which was a closet.

“This is this our second experience with a tree going through a home right next door to us,” Boswell, the neighbor, said. “Now it gives me second thoughts about all those big trees by me.”

“We have a tree that’s leaned since we built up there. And it’s still standing but it scares me,” she added. “It’s very frightening.”

The total amount of rainfall between Saturday night and Monday afternoon is expected to exceed 3 or 4 inches in some valley locations, and reach as much as 5 inches along the coastal ranges, said Gass, the weather service meteorologist.

The National Weather Service Sunday morning also issued a flood warning that was expected to remain in effect until 9:30 a.m. Monday.

Localized flooding occurred in a number of areas, caused by the steady rains throughout the day. Flooding was expected in Santa Rosa, Petaluma, Rohnert Park, Windsor, Sonoma, Sebastopol, Cotati, and Boyes Hot Springs.

Hoevertsz said county road crews on Monday would turn their attention to flooding, even as the rains subside.

Local residents on Sunday posted videos on social media showing higher than normal water levels in various North Bay creeks and waterways.

A resident in Petaluma posted a video Sunday morning that was taken along East Washington Street of the Petaluma River, which appeared to be much higher than its usual level.

In Napa, along Mt. Veeder Road, creeks in that area appeared to be inundated by the rain.

Rain totals from about 1 a.m. to 1 p.m. Sunday varied across the North Bay, with some areas, such as Petaluma, getting as little as a third of an inch and others, near Bodega Bay, receiving up to 3.4 inches.

The Russian River is not predicted to peak at or above flood stage in Healdsburg or Guerneville. But in Hopland, at about 5 a.m. Monday, the river is expected to crest at 17.5 feet, more than 2 feet about its flood stage, potentially leading to “significant flooding on Highway 175 at the approaches the Russian River bridge.

Minor flooding of Highway 222 near Ukiah and in crop land along the left and right banks of the Russian River near Hopland, according to the National Weather Service.

Karen Hankcock, a spokeswoman for the Sonoma County Fire District, said emergency crews responded to fallen trees throughout the county, including a tree that split in two and fell onto two homes on Canon Street in Bodega Bay. The homes, which are across the street from Bodega Bay Elementary School.

Hankcock said there were no injuries.

The wind was the main culprit for most of the damage across the region, said Dalton Behringer, a weather service meteorologist.

The highest local wind gusts Sunday were clocked at 66 mph in Sonoma County’s mountain ranges, according to weather service meteorologist Crystal Oudit. Valley areas recorded gusts of up to 40 mph, weather service officials said.

The high winds also downed a large oak that crashed into a Boyes Hot Springs home early Sunday. They also took down another oak in the Larkfield-Wikiup area just north of Santa Rosa that almost struck a home on Ursuline Road.

In Napa, a huge tree was toppled into a home on Hemlock Street. There was no word of any injuries there on Sunday.

“Really, the rainfall hasn’t been an issue,” Behringer said. “It’s mainly just been the wind.”

The Santa Rosa Fire Department was busy with calls all day because of the winds-related hazards — specifically “lots of trees down, low-hanging trees into wires and blown transformers,” said Santa Rosa Battalion Chief Fire Marshal Paul Lowenthal. He said there haven’t been many calls related to flooding.

Lowenthal said also asked residents should avoid driving if possible during such storms.

“With the amount of trees and debris falling into the streets it really highlights the importance of limiting unnecessary travel,” he said.

Behringer said North Bay residents needed to remain alert around trees and power lines.

“If the rain stops, you're not out of the woods,” he said. “We're still dealing with the wind.”

Monte Rio Fire Chief Steve Baxman said the storm was particularly strong along coast, where he had to lean into headwinds to just get his jacket on.

Baxman had been responding to a report of a tree down on the northbound lane of Highway 1 just north of Meyers Grade Road. He said debris was chopped up, removed and northbound cars were soon able to pass.

But it was the first of many calls that began about noon after a fairly quiet morning in west Sonoma County, Baxman said.

“We were slow all day,” he said Sunday afternoon, “and now all of a sudden it's just exploded.”

About 20 minutes later, Monte Rio firefighters responded to a tree into a house in the 19600 block of Crescent Avenue. The roof of the home was caved in, and the windows were broken, Baxman said.

No one was home when the large redwood struck the house.

A few minutes after responding to that scene, Baxman was rushing to a report of a transformer explosion.

You can reach Staff Writer Madison Smalstig at madison.smalstig@pressdemocrat.com. On X (Twitter) @madi.smals.