Much ado about El Nino

Local residents and cities gear up for what may be a stormy, wet season. But how much is really help and how much is hype?

by Elizabeth Darling Lorenz

Scott Yeaman's auto body shop is about 30 feet from the banks of San Francisquito Creek as it crosses under Highway 101 and East Bayshore Road. He knows the creek well. During one winter storm in 1982, he stayed up most of the night piling up sandbags as the water level rose to within two feet of spilling over the creek bank.

That was his last personal encounter with that weather system known as El Nino--the warming of ocean temperatures off the South American coast which often produces unusual and extreme weather around the globe.

"In 1982, we were fighting it trying to keep the water out. We had the doors blocked," Yeaman recalled.

This year, El Nino is back, but Yeaman's fears about flooding aren't.

Just last week, crews from the state Department of Transportation and the Santa Clara Valley Water District used a bulldozer to push away two large mountains of silt that had choked the creek's channel for years.

"We've been bugging them for years" to do this, he said. "I'm assuming with all this dug out we'll be OK," he added as he watched birds scavenge for food along the creek bank.

It's an example of the preparations that are under way for what may be the stormiest West Coast winter on record.

Across town at Palo Alto City Hall, public works, utilities, fire, and police officials have been overseeing a large-scale cleanup of blocked storm drains, trimming of trees that have grown into power lines and other projects. They also have been developing a strategy to prepare for El Nino.

El Nino's effects may be as dramatic as they were in 1982, when it brought rainfall that was 170 percent of normal to the Bay Area.

Meteorologists define El Nino as a rapid warming of the ocean surface in the eastern Pacific, along the coast of South America. The phenomenon often brings unusually unstable winter weather to the Pacific coast of the United States, often in the form of more rainfall.

But when it comes to the potential impacts of El Nino, even the most knowledgeable are having a hard time separating fact and unfounded fear.

Palo Alto Senior Engineer Joe Teresi, who is well-informed on the El Nino phenomenon, said he doesn't really know what to expect this winter. Just last week, he received an invitation to a seminar in the Bay Area for professionals like himself to hear television meteorologist Joel Bartlett speak on "El Nino: Myth or Reality?"

"I think it's a lot less certain than people are making it out to be," Teresi said of the potential magnitude of this winter's storms. "It's definitely not to be ignored. What we're trying to do is be prepared. It doesn't do any good to worry about it."

But Palo Alto city crews and those in neighboring cities are working hard to make sure the infrastructure is ready for the nastiest of storms. The 2,750 storm drains in Palo Alto are being cleared of built-up leaves, the main culprit when the water starts to collect on neighborhood streets during rains.

Although city crews are working hard to respond to residents' concerns, preparing for storms means business as usual for them, and they aren't doing anything differently this year.

"It's like (painting) the Golden Gate Bridge," said John Ballard, public works supervisor for city of Palo Alto. "We do it continuously," he said. Rain or shine, storm drains are always being flushed and cleaned somewhere in Palo Alto. "El Nino is the phenomenon that the news media has used . . . the reality is we always do storm drain preparation."

The storm drains channel rain water into the city's creeks, which then carry the water to the bay.

And, every time it rains, Ballard makes sure crews are constantly clearing leaves from curbside catch basin grates. "If something happens, we have a contingency." For example, two years ago, when hundreds of trees fell throughout the city during storms, all crews, from storm drain to sidewalk repair, were called in to help.

"The electric overhead system is the most susceptible to winter storms," said Larry Starr, assistant director of utilities and engineering operations. However, most of the storm preparation is the same as it is every year, he says. About 40 wooden utility poles will be replaced, and overhead power line connectors that are running hot and could cause power outages are also being replaced. The department has also made an effort to trim trees away from power lines, including the long line that runs up the foothills to Black Mountain.

The public agencies are also helping, and encouraging, residents to prepare of the worst.

In case of flooding, the Santa Clara Valley Water District will provide filled sandbags at a site at the Palo Alto Airport beginning on Nov. 7, and the city of Palo Alto will have four sandbag sites throughout the city where residents can fill bags themselves. Yeaman used sandbags in 1982, before he got the cement-filled bags that now line the creek bank across the driveway from his business.

"Right now what you want to do is tell folks to get flood insurance," said Mike Di Marco, spokesman for the Santa Clara Valley Water District. "It's just a really good investment." But the time for sandbags isn't now, he stressed. "Last year we saw people building fortresses around their property. But that can actually trap water." The time for sandbags, he said, is "once flooding appears imminent. You'll know when the time is right."

One of the biggest concerns in Palo Alto is San Francisquito Creek, which unlike the city's other waterways, has not been subject to any major flood improvements in recent years.

Palo Alto, Menlo Park and water district officials walked a section of San Francisquito Creek from the Oak Creek Apartments to University Avenue earlier this month. The officials identified fallen limbs and debris, and divvied up work that needs to be done by each entity. The two cities share the creek, Menlo Park with the northern bank and Palo Alto the southern. The water district oversees flood control for San Francisquito, as well as three Palo Alto creeks--Adobe, Barron and Matadero.

Are they ready? "It depends when it comes," said Menlo Park City Engineer Ruben Nino. "It all has to do with timing."

Menlo Park has cleaned about three-quarters of its more than 1,000 storm drain inlets (located at curb corners), said City Maintenance Director Dan Freitas. "We're in the process of having one storm drain pump station rebuilt," he said, and they've repaired the flood gates at the Bohannon flood channel, which keeps water from coming in from San Francisco Bay.

Menlo Park's flood plain lies mainly in the eastern portion of town, in an area called the O'Brien business district. Another problem area which city officials will watch is the Pope Street Bridge over San Francisquito Creek. A new preliminary flood map from FEMA has placed the whole Willows neighborhood, from the creek over to Santa Margarita Avenue, in a new flood zone, in the event of an extremely unlikely 500-year flood.

Clearing the eastern section of San Francisquito Creek on the border of East Palo Alto and Palo Alto took years of haggling with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, the Regional Water Quality Control Board, and other agencies, Teresi said. What finally convinced the water quality control board were dramatic photos Teresi took of the swollen creek lapping at the East Bayshore bridge he shot during a storm in March 1995.

The clearing project, a joint effort between Caltrans and the Santa Clara Valley Water District, was finished last week.

As for other potential flood-prone areas, the Federal Emergency Management Agency has maps of Menlo Park and Palo Alto and other cities designating "Special Flood Hazard Areas" where a 100-year flood could inundate homes and businesses with one foot or more of water. Last week, FEMA issued updated maps expanding the designated flood zones to include an additional 800 homes in the area in and near Crescent Park. (See story on page 7)

With the completion of several flood channel projects, local creeks have been bolstered to contain enough water for the most catastrophic of floods, referred to as a "100-year flood," by the Santa Clara Valley Water District.

A 100-year flood, Teresi explained, doesn't mean a flood that occurs every 100 years. "A more proper way to present it is a 1 percent flood. It has a 1 percent chance of occurring." But, he pointed out, nature doesn't operate on a schedule.

Because of the recently completed flood control project for Barron and Matadero creeks, some residents of South Palo Alto can be a little more at ease. The city should have "a greater level of protection than what people saw in the last El Nino," said Water District spokeswoman Mala McGill.

The exceptions are some homes along sections of Barron Creek and Matadero Creek in Barron Park which apparently are not up to handling the major flood, due to a water district error (See sidebar on page XX).

The water district, which is the county's flood management agency, has set up a flood hotline, 1-888-HEY-NOAH, to give residents information on flood safety, sandbag sites, weather and reservoir levels.

"We're about two to three months earlier with everything. Normally we wouldn't be starting until after Christmas," McGill said. But, she added, it's not necessary to be alarmed. "We're not preparing for 40 days and 40 nights. When we start getting concerned is when we've got three storms stacked up and our reservoirs are full."

State officials so far have been leading the campaign of concern about what El Nino will bring. Gov. Pete Wilson held an "El Nino Summit" last week, gathering 14 state agencies to discuss preparations for this winter. He also signed a bill earmarking more than $7 million to fund emergency preparedness efforts, and declared October 27-31 "Winter Weather and Flood Preparedness Week." Wilson called on President Clinton to ensure streamlining of federal regulatory agencies to quicken flood repair and preparation work.

But even the people whose job it is to worry about meteorological events aren't sure what nature is going to do.

This winter's rainfall, predicts National Weather Service forecaster Dan Kierns, will most likely be "at least normal and probably somewhat above normal." That could be as high as 170 percent of normal, based on the patterns of the three rainiest past El Ninos. But the good news is that, based on records going back 150 years, it's unlikely it will be higher than that. "Nowhere have we seen anyone record twice what they normally get."

He expects there to be a 10 to 15 percent chance of getting such a high level of rainfall. "That would be a worst-case scenario."

A lot depends on timing. Last year, Kierns pointed out, "we had normal precipitation. It all fell between a two-week period," he said, which caused flooding. But, there was no El Nino last year.

What is likely to happen this year, Kierns said, is that the warmer ocean waters will evaporate faster than cooler water, forming a lot of warm, moisture-laden clouds, which will travel toward California. "If you put a warm, moist air mass into the westerlies (the flow of air coming off Pacific to California) you end up with more rainfall."

What is Kierns telling his friends to do? Clean their gutters, patch their roofs, but "I don't tell them to go build an ark in their back yard."

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