Winter storm bearing down on Bay Area
JOHN BURGESS/ PD Workers bring in the grapes at Simi's vineyard on Piner Rd. in Santa Rosa on Monday morning.
The first major storm of the rainy season packing gale-force winds and from 3 to 5 inches of rain was expected to slam into the Bay Area overnight, causing problems for motorists and threatening the grape harvest.
“By Tuesday it should be nasty. There's no other way to describe it,” Diana Henderson, meteorologist for the National Weather Service, said Monday. “(It's) windy, going to be rainy, areas hit by fires earlier this summer should be in the greatest threat of erosion, and nasty conditions,” she said.
Monday grape growers scrambled to bring in as much fruit as possible from Wine Country vineyards and power company crews pushed to get ready for expected power outages.
“...it looks like the entire service territory is going to be hit pretty hard,” said Jana Morris, spokeswoman for PG&E from a region stretching from Marin north to Humboldt County.
With winds predicted to gust from 40-60 mph overnight in the worst areas and continuing through Tuesday, outages were expected, Morris said.
Because this storm is coming before trees have shed all their leaves, the added weight could be a factor in falling limbs and trees, she said.
A gale warning was in effect through Tuesday afternoon. In the lower areas of the North Bay, winds were expected to blow at 20 to 30 mph.
The heaviest rain was expected today. Forecasters were calling for up to an inch of rain in the North Bay Area by 5 a.m., with as much as 4 more inches coming throughout the day Tuesday in parts of the North Coast region, PG&E crews were told.
The grape harvest was about 70 percent complete by Monday, with crews extending shifts to get the grapes in before the wet weather strikes. One winery reported it completed about one-third of its picking within the past week.
Most of the white wine grapes, susceptible to rotting from wet weather, have been harvested.
“The good news is most of the chardonnay is out,” said Nick Frey, president of the Sonoma County Wine Grape Commission. “When the chardonnay is out, it means the white varieties are essentially done.”
The red wine grapes, such as cabernet sauvignon and merlot, do better against rot because they have thicker skins and their clusters aren't packed as closely together as the white wine grapes, Frey said.
Farmers said a big storm could hamper the harvest of pumpkins and the planting of seeds for forage crops.
“If we get 2 to 3 inches of rain, or more, it's going to be difficult to get everything off the field,” said Farm Bureau President Robert Muelrath.
On Monday Muelrath brought in extra help to harvest the remainder of his pumpkin crop. He said he wanted to avoid pumpkins rotting in the field should the storm dump so much rain that the fields became too muddy for harvest.
Jim Groverman, farmer and operator of the Petaluma Pumpkin Patch and Amazing Corn Maze, said a heavy rain would affect his harvest but he expected the corn maze to dry out by the weekend.
“This ground is real dry and it will soak up a lot,” he said.
Dairy farmer Doug Beretta of Santa Rosa said a big storm will delay his fall planting of crops for forage and hay. When rain saturates the ground, he said, “we've got enough clay in that soil that it makes it real hard to get through it with a disc.”
Frey was hoping the storm would be followed by sunshine and a slight breeze to “dry things out as fast as you can.”
That warming forecast is currently on the horizon, according to forecasters.
The bulk of the storm should be gone by Thursday with skies returning to partly cloudy. Friday could be as warm as upper 70s in Santa Rosa.
Rain could return to the area, however, on Sunday.
October, while typically the start of the weather year's rainfall, often is dry. Last year, only .78 of an inch fell in Santa Rosa during the month.
But there have been some gully washers in Octobers past, including the record October storm of 1962.
During a five-day period, from Oct 10-14, 9.46 inches fell on Santa Rosa, according to Press Democrat records.
The heaviest day was Oct. 12, with an all-time rainfall record for an October day in Santa Rosa of 4.67 inches.
Weather forecasters at the time had predicted a monster storm coming and Press Democrat news stories reported its pending arrival and a feared threat to the county's unharvested grape crop.
The heaviest rains came that first day, including a whopping 8.37 inches recorded in Cloverdale. The storm was blamed for two highway deaths near Glen Ellen, the loss of a salmon trawler moored in Point Arena and the cancellation of the sixth game of the World Series. Wind gusts in the 1962 storm reached 55 mph at the Sonoma County airport.
Damage and loss were worse in Oregon, where the storm left 57 dead and a state requests for help from President Kennedy's Office of Emergency Planning.
Vineyard owners then brought in hundreds of farm hands to help pick the grapes.