Significant rain and high winds continue today as an atmospheric river lashes Northern California. Forecasters expect flooding, power outages and hazardous roads.
River and stream flooding, falling trees and downed powerlines along with high elevation snow will continue making travel hazardous across the region as the brunt of a pineapple express system flows above the region.
Hanna Chandler-Cooley is a forecaster with the National Weather Service in Sacramento. She said the Sacramento River is expected to reach flood stage at several places.
“On the Sacramento near the Tehama Bridge, the Vina-Woodson Bridge and Ord Ferry.” Chandler-Cooley explained.
Chandler-Cooley said motorists should never drive through standing water.
Through Thursday the valley should receive three to five inches of rain, with locally heavier amounts. As much as a dozen inches of rain are expected in the Feather River basin.
More than eight feet of new snow is possible atop Lassen Peak. Snow levels will rise to 6,000 feet today, but fall again tonight, adding to runoff.
Chandler-Cooley said earlier warnings of mud slides and debris flows within burned areas has been revised downward.
“To get any kind of major impacts on the burn scars, we need really heavy precipitation in a very short amount of time. Something that you would get from a thunderstorm.” she said.
Still, plenty of dangers remain. Wind gusts are expected to reach 50 miles per hour on the valley floor, 60 in the mountains. That, together with saturated soils could topple trees and powerlines, creating roadblocks and blackouts.
Flooding is also expected across rural valley roads in the usual locations.
Though a tremendous amount of water is flowing into Lake Oroville, the reservoir has risen about 65 feet over the past month, it is still 33 feet below the newly built spillway.