A Different Drummer: Singing and sinking in the rain

After watching the latest “Star Wars” movie on Tuesday evening in Vallejo, I had to drive upstream to get home. With rooster-tails flaring and water gushing over my grill, I drove up Turner Parkway clutching the wheel. A nearby storm drain was shooting a fountain of frothy water into the air and onto the roadway.
We first stopped briefly at Black Angus for Happy cocktails and some sports. However, their satellite lost signal, and all the televisions froze, then went black into screensaver mode, pitching the whole bar into relative darkness. Time to go home.
When I got home and pulled into my driveway, I had to brake suddenly. There was a black iron box in the middle of my parking space. Gino and I climbed out to inspect. It looked like a crab trap. I picked it up. It was heavy. “What the…?”
“Oh,” said Gino. “You know what that is? That’s your chimney cap.”
“But my chimney is on the other end of the house. How could this be the cap?” I said, but damned if it wasn’t. It had blown and flown a good 40 feet.
We checked under our hillside house for flooding. The soil was soaked, but our sump pump never came on, thanks to new gutters last fall.
“Well, you know what this means?” I said to Gino. “I have a topic for next Sunday’s column. Rain stats.”
I sat at my computer and began compiling flood and mud news. Here are some of the highlights from around the region.
Benicia called a State of Emergency on Wednesday morning and closed 11 streets, many of them in the Industrial Park area.
The impressive $18.5 million dollar Napa River Bypass saved Napa city streets from flooding when the river rose five feet above flood stage. Spectators came into town to see the Bypass filled with foaming whitewater, an event that occurred twice in three days. Silverado Trail, one of only two north-south routes, got closed by mudslides.
I-80 near Truckee was closed both ways due to mudslides and downed powerlines. Silly people looking for detours by using GPS and no local knowledge got stranded on snow-bound mountain roads and had to be rescued.
Highway 17 in Scotts Valley going into Santa Cruz was blocked by a mudslide and downed telephone poles, snarling traffic for miles in both directions.
The famous Pioneer Cabin tree in Calaveras, 1,000-years-old, 150-feet tall, toppled and is no more.
Sierra snowpack is 158-percent of normal. Lake Tahoe got 33.6 billion gallons of water and rose a foot. Westbound US Route 50 at Kyburz suffered a mudslide and had to close until cleanup crews could respond. Squaw Valley reported whopping 173-mph winds.
A tree fell across Interstate 230 in Hillsborough injuring one driver who couldn’t stop in time. In Oakland a taxi driver died when his cab drove into the estuary near the airport. A second fatality in the East Bay occurred on Interstate 880 in Freemont. In San Francisco a man sleeping in a tent in Golden Gate Park had a tree fall and trap him and he had to be rescued.
US 395 closed at three places in Mono County because of high winds and whiteout conditions. All told California authorities reported 100 calls on flooding and 30 calls on downed trees within 48 hours.
Across the border Nevada declared a State of Emergency for the Reno area as the Truckee river crested at 12.3 feet, three feet over flood stage. Mount Rose Highway was closed twice in three days after six-foot avalanches blocked the roadway.
Amtrak passenger and freight trains were stopped from traveling into and out of California and Union Pacific has been scrambling to restore access lines.
All told we have had more rain so far in 2017 than in all of 2013.
Blame it all on a river in the sky. Two atmospheric rivers known as the Pineapple Express have passed over us so far, bringing warm winds and rain from Hawaii. We’ve taken a big bite out of five-year drought so far, but it will take several more major storms to bring the groundwater tables back to normal.
It’s a big bad storm, yes, but except for the sorrow, expense, damage, and danger, people seem to be kind of happy for the rain. Some are singing in it. Crazy friends of mine posted themselves kayaking down the American River, flying through Trouble Maker Rapid, dodging and rolling through a torrent of brown muddy froth.
Skiers are beside themselves with joy and anticipation of eventually making it through the flood and mud to the slopes that closed for some serious powder. As a cabin owner in South Lake Tahoe we have seen reservations increase as snow lovers attempt to book and look at this massive whiteout firsthand.
What’s ahead? More storms. Authorities say the next one will be colder not being part of the Pineapple Express and that will help the snow to stick. That’s a good thing.
Scientists at MIT predict that California is in for a wet future due to global warming. They believe we will, by 2100, see three more major precipitation events per year than the current average. It seems there is a big drought turnabout on the eventual horizon.