River from Hawaiʻi

Okay, so that was some rain today — an impressive atmospheric river event!  I drove out to work at the coast around 8 a.m. this morning, but it was a little sketchy — lots of water on the roads.  After looking at the precipitation pattern, it makes sense that the creeks were overflowing at that time.  Here's the rainfall data from the Bodega Ocean Observing Node:

 

Note the peak around 5-6 a.m., and that around that time it rained ~1 inch in 1 hour!  The total for the 24 hours around this morning's rain event was ~4 inches (!). 

I decided I didn't want to drive through more water on the way home.  So I took a few quick wave pictures for the record, and then headed east.  The offshore buoy was reporting swells of ~16 feet this morning.

 

 

On the way home, I stopped briefly in Bodega to take a few photos of Salmon Creek where it crosses under the Bodega Highway.

Here's the view looking downstream:

 

And two views looking upstream:

 

 

 

In the view above you can see that the water level in the creek was quite high relative to the road.  This photo was taken ~9:30 a.m.

More rain is coming tonight, and there's a Flash Flood Watch in effect until 10 a.m. tomorrow, so watch the forecasts and stay safe!