The second of three storms cleared the Palo Alto area Friday afternoon but not before significantly flooding a portion of West Bayshore Road as well as East Bayshore near the City’s Municipal Service Center due to the rising tide, the Palo Alto utilities department announced.
Strong winds coupled with heavy rains sent autumn leaves straight into storm drains, clogging them and causing flooding along numerous Palo Alto streets.
“We had a huge amount of wind and massive amounts of leaves. A lot got pushed into the storm drains,” said Debra Katz, spokesperson for City of Palo Alto Utilities on Friday morning.
Katz noted that the city has been concentrating on making sure the city’s creeks are clear, removing large logs and other debris. The heavy rains and wind are relatively early in the season and caught city workers by surprise, she said.
“Hopefully, they’ll be able to clear them out before the next storm,” she added.
Water in all city creeks remained below 50 percent of their capacity. There was no indication that any creeks would overflow Friday, the department stated.
No power outages were reported in Palo Alto due to the storm, which dropped 2.75 inches of rain as measured in Foothills Park.
The next storm is expected to reach the area on Saturday night and is predicted to be as least as substantial as Friday’s downpour. The ground is now completely saturated, so more water is likely to run off on Saturday and Sunday than did on Friday, according to the department.
Gusts in Palo Alto may reach 25 mph.
The City of Palo Alto has live monitors on the city’s creeks, which can be viewed at the city’s website.
By Palo Alto Weekly staff and Bay City News
By Palo Alto Weekly staff and Bay City News
By Palo Alto Weekly staff and Bay City News
Just returned from being out and discovered lots of flooded roads around town. Some are on arteries, but some are on local residential streets. I suspect leaves are blocking some of the storm drains so strongly suggest that if you live near a blocked storm drain you take it on yourself to remove leaves to allow the water to drain.
Oregon Expressway is flooded right now. Westbound is closed at Alma Street.
Here’s the link to the CPA creek monitor:
http://www.cityofpaloalto.org/gov/depts/pwd/creek_monitor/creek_monitor_only.asp
Given the forecast, I would say that Friday and Saturday will be the days to keep track of creek levels.
I think we are about due for an El Nino year. This may be it. I hope the city is ready, but it doesn’t look like it so far. There shouldn’t be any flooding at this point.
http://www.cityofpaloalto.org/services/safety/flood.asp
City of Palo Alto Contact numbers for storm related emergencies:
Blocked storm drains and/or slides:
Palo Alto Public Works Operations
496-6974 (weekdays 7 a.m.-5p.m.)
329-2413 (after hours)
Fallen Trees:
Palo Alto Public Works
496-5953 (weekdays 7 a.m.-5 p.m.)
329-2413 (after hours)
Gas leaks, sewer spills:
Palo Alto Communications 329-2579
Power outages & electrical problems:
Palo Alto Electric Operations 496-6914
CPA Emergency Message:
Palo Alto 329-2420 (during flood emergency only)
The Paly campus was dramatically flooded on Wednesday and students were wading across a “moat” to get into various buildings!
The gutters along Louis Road were totally full of leaves the past few days. The City should have been working OT to remove the leaves. Creek blockages should have been removed continuously over the past weeks.
Folks, please do not park your cars on the street on street cleaning days. My low IQ neighbors are always doing this. The street cleaners do there best, but they have to skip half a block whenever just one car is blocking their way. If you don’t already know, you can find the street cleaning day for your block on the city web site.
I don’t think the City has enough staff to clear all of the storm drains during big storms. Palo Alto has over 197 miles of streets!
It would be very helpful if each block had one or two residents willing to clear drains periodically throughout the storm.
I’m putting on my boots and heading out to clear drains now.
Come join me!
According to the weather guy on CBS5 the Bay Area is the only area of the country whole experience a mild, dry Winter. So this could be it for us.
I noticed one of my good neighbors out this morning, with rake and rainwear, clearing the leaves from the storm drain at the low end of our block. Why is this so hard for people to do? And ditto for parking on street cleaning days–we are fortunate, some cities forbid parking on street cleaning days.
So 14 years of work on replacing the Chaucer street bridge, and we’ve made it to the planning phase. Nice work guys! Hopefully after the next flood or two we’ll see some real progress.
Hydrologists say that the SF Creek backs up starting from 101 then up the line. Chaucer is #4 in the sequence. One of the biggest ‘roadblocks’ is 101 then it ballons upstream. If the water rushes through a rebuilt Chaucer Bridge downstream and the volume can’t make it through University, Newell, and 101, the water just comes over in other places. This happened in 1955.
We live next door to a construction site and the workers on that house park in front of my house every weekday, including street cleaning day. I have asked them to park elsewhere on street cleaning day, and they swore at me.
I called the city about it, and they said there is nothing they can do about it, since it is legal for the workers to park there. As a result, I have had to go out and rake out the gutters twice this week.
@bob – The further downstream it overflows the fewer people are affected. You think it is better if it overflows at Chaucer than if it overflows at 101? Fixing Chaucer was easy, and still couldn’t get done.
Here’s some pictures of Paly flooding on Wednesday. The floods had gone yesterday and were just as bad today. http://palyvoice.com/2012/11/28/flooding-inconveniences-students-on-first-day-of-projected-set-of-storms/
@Mom, I feel your pain. You sound like a considerate type, like we are. We have also had discourteous builders/their contractors/renovators/decorators of nearby homes (and sometimes homeowners themselves/absentee homeowners) park often or continuously in front of our house instead of their own (or at least moving vehicles occasionally to share the pain). Here’s a novel thought: how ’bout having at least ONE vehicle in one’s own driveway? Street cleaining issues are only part of the discourtesy. It makes it difficult to back out of one’s own driveway owing to blocking visibility and on occasion, actual blockage of OUR driveway! This concern of some of us in PA has been noted on one or two threads in the recent past. Thankfully, our major problems are in the recent past (though it went on for years), but it is also worth noting people put their giant trash bins in the gutter, blocking the flow of water, with prompt backup where I live. Please don’t block the flow of water and ALL of us can rake leaves so that the rainwater can flow.
@Parent, thanks for sharing the dramatic photos – sheesh PALY has been around long enough – what, 100 yrs? – so you’d think the district would have installed decent drainage by now! It’s not like it has been raining for days on end.
What is going on at Town & Country. At 7:00 AM on Saturday a flood of water was flowing from their parking lot into Embarcadero and down to the Alma Street underpass. Anyone who undertakes to pave over a large area for commercial parking should also undertake to handle the runoff from their project.
Some have recently complained about rude treatment by contractors preventing leaf removal.
1) Take down the name of the general contractor.
2) Contact them and outline the problem and ask their cooperation.
3) If they brush you off, offer to publish their name here. They need community good-will to continue in business.
It is troubling to hear that some neighbors are so intent on the convenience of on-street parking during street sweeping that they would risk the flooding their own residence and that of their neighbors.
Perhaps Palo Alto needs to consider accepting the inconvenience of rainy season street sweeping being done on alternate sides of a street on alternate days. As it stands, some clearly have no place to park if both sides are swept on the same day.
I see many people sweeping or blowing leaves from their sidewalks or planting strips into the street. This is against the law according to a municipal ordinance, and it overloads the street sweepers and storm drains. If the leaves fall on your property you should put them in your compost bin.
Agree with Donald. Makes sense.
To baumgrenze:
Re: Water from Town and Country Village: fire hydrant hit
Saturday morning a vehicle hit a Fire Hydrant in town and country village.
I do not know the details, but I saw the situation at about 8am when they were cleaning up the mess.