Weekend storm was 'a real eye-opener'

Brenda Canamore has dealt with storm damage before, but in her 12 years of living in Olivehurst, she said, this year is the worst.

On Saturday, Canamore watched water seep into her living room carpet when her house on Ardmore Avenue began to flood. No trees had fallen on her house like they had in the past, but the tenants living in her Linda home were not so lucky — a 150-foot tree had crashed through their roof. She expects the damage to cost her from $3,000 to $4,000.

Kenneth Mosley Sr. was in the Linda Avenue home when the tree came down.

"It sounded like a tornado when it went down," Mosley said, "like 'whoooop ... BAM!'" No one was injured, but it left neighbor William Brooks shaken. He heard the roots popping out of the ground moments before the tree toppled.

"All my life I've never seen anything like this act of nature," Brooks said. "It's a real eye-opener."

Another 1.5 inches of rain is expected to fall between today and Wednesday afternoon. Fog is likely, as well.

Things should settle down after that, National Weather Service forecaster George Cline said, as the storm track continues to move north.

Yuba County spokesman Russ Brown said the county does not foresee any issues from the next storm.

The latest storm to sweep Yuba-Sutter dumped nearly 5 inches of rain over a four-day period. The National Weather Service recorded .88-inch of rainfall at the beginning of the storm Wednesday and 1.64 inches Friday at the storm's peak.

Rainfall numbers for November reached nearly 5 inches. "They met our expectations," Cline said.

But while the storm dropped quite a bit of rain and brought a lot of wind, overall damage and other effects on Yuba-Sutter were fairly mild.

Brown said the low-lying areas emergency experts expected to have some flooding issues did, and plenty of branches came down.

"Nothing completely unexpected," he said. "It was just the rapidness with which the water rose that was surprising."

As the storm reached its peak late Saturday and early Sunday, Brown said, the flow on the Yuba River near Marysville went from 20 cubic feet per second to 44 in a matter of hours. It's since dropped to 15 as of Monday afternoon.

Some areas near Highway 70 and McGowan Parkway saw some flooding when a drainage ditch could not keep up, Brown said, and he has heard fast-rising creeks caused some damage in Sycamore Ranch and Hammon Grove parks near Browns Valley.

On the other hand, Sutter County saw relatively little damage from the storms, said spokesman Chuck Smith.

As typical, portions of several roads in the Pleasant Grove area have been closed because of flooding, among them Fifield Road, Keys Road, Pleasant Grove Road, Placer Road, Bear River Drive, Brewer Road and Hicks Road.

Those roads are especially susceptible to flooding because of drainage from Placer County to the east, Smith said.

Franklin Road, in the Sutter Bypass, was closed Monday because of flooding. The affected roads will remain closed until further notice.

"They got the winds they expected, they got the rain they expected," Smith said. "Fortunately, we had a lot of breaks in the weather."

Smith said Tuesday that Pass Road and Sacramento Avenue were closed, along with Nicolaus Avenue in south Sutter County between Warren and Pleasant Grove roads.

CONTACT Ben van der Meer at bvandermeer@appealdemocrat.com and Griffin Rogers at grogers@appealdemocrat.com.