October Storm Pummels Marin, Sonoma Counties
SAN RAFAEL (CBS SF) – An October storm front roared through Sonoma and Marin counties early Tuesday, dumping over than 2 inches of rain across the region.
The storm, which rolled in late Monday, dumped 4 inches of rain in the San Geronimo area, 2.36 inches in Sebastopol, 2.62 inches in San Anselmo, 2.50 in Sonoma, St. Helena 2.68, Windsor 2.91 and San Rafael 1.77 inches by 8 a.m.
South of the Golden Gate Bridge, the totals were much less, but the slick roadways made for treacherous driving conditions. The CHP reported numerous fender benders.
The sloppy condition led to a slow morning commute with the drive from the Carquinez Bridge to the MacArthur Maze took 70 minutes. Normally the trip into the Bay Bridge takes 30 minutes.
While the North Bay bore the brunt of the storm, the wet weather all but sparred the Santa Cruz Mountains which got as much as 9 inches of rain during last week's storm.
That will not be the case, forecasters say, with another storm front targeting the Bay Area Thursday. The rain could be heavy over the Loma and Soberanes burn areas, raising fears of mudslides.
As much as 2-4 inches of new rain could fall from the Santa Cruz Mountains to the Big Sur hills.
Over the weekend of Oct. 15, a storm front pummeled those areas with Corralitos near Watsonville getting 9.7 inches of rain, Ben Lomond had 8.7 inches and Ormsby Road near the Loma fire epicenter had 9.3 inches of rain.
"It's all about how much coverage does the soil still have," said Drew Coe, Cal Fire's forest practice program monitoring coordinator. "If you see bare soil, the chances of your watersheds and hillsides for erosion is very much higher."
Coe said people who live in and around the areas of the Loma Fire, which burned nearly 4,500 acres in Santa Clara County, and the Soberanes Fire, which burned more than 132,000 acres in Monterey County, should pay particularly close attention to weather forecasts this year.
"The most critical thing is if you happen to be in a very high-risk area, it's better to just get out and evacuate if there's bad weather coming," he said
The weather had some potential bad news for Bay Area Trick or Treaters on Halloween night. The current weather models predict the potential risk of more rain by and around Halloween into next week.
