Hi everyone,
How are you? I know it's especially bad in Nor Cal. Please check in if you can.

Back in early December we had a large oak fall on our shed, after one of the first storms of the season. That still has to be fixed (we're having trouble getting hold of a contractor), but other than that, we are doing okay thus far, thanks for asking.

The neighbor to the south's property looks to be several inches underwater, at least in a very wide area, from what we can see. (They are several feet lower than both street level, and our side yard level.) They have always had a drainage issue there which they never addressed, and combined with being the lowest property on the street...

Also hoping everyone on the west coast who is affected by the rains, landslides, winds, lightening, etc. is safe and unharmed. We here, in Canada, are seeing news reports of the flooding happening in California and feel for the people. This weather is greatly disrupting their lives. So many are on evacuatioin notice and several unfortunate souls have lost their lives. gt is heart wrenching. Even what were small creeks have turned into churning fast flowing rivers. It must be terrifying for people to see the rivers overflowing and having water covering everything. Can't imagine wading through knee deep oe higher water. How does one recover from these catastrophes?

TigerPaws!!!

Wow Marilyn! It seems you all have really had a time of it. Glad your property is set up high.

Elsa. Glad to be here.

"High" is relative. We are sort of at the base of the foothills of a coastal mountain range, so the elevation here is maybe 300 ft or so? (It's been a while since I looked at my GPS here, which does not agree with the elevation that I've seen quoted online for our city/town.) Certainly we're not right down on the coast, like the flooded areas of Santa Cruz or Santa Barbara.

That said, we *are* in a little bit of a depression; the properties across the street are significantly higher than ours; the properties on the hill in back of us are similarly higher than ours. Think of the hill in back, and the hill across the street out front, all funneling down to the creek than runs through the center of our property.

(I think there is a minor fault line in our neighborhood, and that creek may be in the rift zone. At least I remember looking at fault line maps a few years ago (LONG after we bought this property) and found a fault in the immediate neighborhood. Sometimes, DD and I, late at night, lying in bed, have felt the house vibrating. DH has a small mineral specimen he uses as a "seismometer"... if it has moved, he thinks it's because of microquakes (he has never felt what DD and I have). I have noted that sometimes, one nightstand in the bedroom seems to have migrated.)

Our neighbor immediately south of us is lower than us (and the street), which is why they got flooded. Our neighbor immediately to the north of us did some major excavation a year or two ago and I suspect (but I still haven't looked) that they may have had some flooding in that area.

All I can say is that I am very glad that after the storm back in ? 2003/2004 that took out the original bridge here, that the Army Corps of Engineers (we think it was) did remedial work upstream and downstream (iirc it was along a river), so our creek, while high during the winter storms, hasn't yet gotten bridge high.

Well, that was interesting.... and disturbing.

I went looking for fault line maps in our city/town, and there are two fault zones. One is more in the mountains (higher elevation than us, anyway) across the highway from us (so a few miles away), but one is disturbingly close, maybe a quarter mile away. According to the map, our creek is not in the rift zone, BUT our property is considered to be in a liquefaction zone.

YIKES!

When the storm was continuous rain, day after day, the creek at the end of the road flooded and no cars were able to get out.

Fortunately, we didn't have any appointments that week! Lucky for us, it has subsided since, but more storms are coming.

Our property is high and dry in the Santa Cruz mountains, although the creeks down in the canyons have been raging. An amazing amount of timber has floated downstream. My neighbors bridge was pretty much destroyed by the wood backing up behind it, and knocking it off the abutments. The creek was forced around it, and washed out the road to the bridge and probably 25-30' of bank. Hard to imagine where all that wood came from as this branch of the creek is only about 5 miles long..



The culvert on our little creek got clogged and has needed cleaning out twice, and I'll climb down there again tomorrow as one of the pipes is clogged again.


The debris also clogged up the bridge in our town and flooded the whole downtown area. Our road into town was closed in both directions with a slide above us.. There are a couple of annoying work-arounds, but I didn't need to go anywhere, and it's easier to just stay put..

Houses and businesses along the coast were battered by a combination of high tide and storm surge.. Logs that washed down the creeks and rivers became battering rams in the waves.. Capitola and Rio Del Mar were hammered...

Meanwhile, up in the mountains.. The North end of the county has been without power for over a week. ATT has stopped maintaining their batteries, so those who have depended on a hard wired phone for communication and emergencies have been SOL.. Fortunately, we've only been without power for a few hours, and have back-up solar batteries, and a generator to back those up.. Those of us who have lived up here for any amount of time, know what to do to prepare against these eventualities. Even so, we had high winds that snapped branches and tops of trees.. the soil is so wet that 300' redwoods have fallen over.

I've been digging ditches to divert the water in various places, and that seems to be working fine.. A couple of Iris beds are under water, but I'm sure most will be fine..

We've been fortunate, with only minor damage (branches vs wire fence-easy fix)..

Thanks for checking in Sherry, Evelyn and Marilyn. Sounds hellish scary. Glad you were not forced to flee. My heart goes out to those who were.

It sure seems like feast or famine for you guys, first you have years of drought, now the rain won't stop. That looks to be quite a mess Sherry. I'm sure all of the fires have made the problem worse, as there's less water shed to hold things together. It hurts to hear about the falling redwoods, as well as the strife of the people living in this mess of lost power and property, let alone loss of life.

Wow, Sherry, you really have it bad down there. Stay strong (because more to come), and stay safe!

Lyn ~ Thank you so much for checking in on us Californians. So far, so good.

It didn't rain for 2 days so that helped a bit. Only when we get continual rain, there is a problem.

The creek at the end of the road floods and the road out is not passable. This happened earlier when we were getting more of our share of rain. And the basement started to flood. ShopVac to the rescue!

Hopefully we will get rain, but not all day, every day. The people that live in the lower-lying areas were faring worse, with many downed trees, flooded homes, broken power lines, clogged drainage ditches and some with damaged roofs or vehicles.

"This too shall pass..."

My sympathies for everyone dealing with the difficult flooding/trees down/etc. situations.

I was wondering about the burn scars near you, Evelyn; iirc the fire (was it last year or the year before?) came very near you. I hope you aren't in any danger there of landslides/rockslides/etc. AND that you have enough grid backup devices, food, water, heat to just sit this mess out.

Hi Lyn, Thanks for your concern about us Californians. My town is in the rain shadow of the coastal mountain range, so, although we've gotten A LOT of rain (13 inches in less than three weeks), we haven't had the flooding or mudslides that have hit other parts of the state. Some of the storms have been very windy, though, and there has been a fair amount of tree damage.

DH just informed me that our driveway is starting to flood. (Did I tell you that we, as well as our south neighbors, are below street level? We are higher than they are, though. They'd better have sandbags around their house!)

I'm not really worried; we have two long drains built into the driveway, and generally they take care of the problem. With massive rains we *have* had some flooding in the driveway in the past, but not too badly and the house was always okay. Possibly the drains got cluttered with debris - certainly there must be a lot of that being washed down the road. Our garden helper should be here tomorrow (he was here Wednesday) so if things are flooded, he can help dredge the drains.

Meanwhile, we aren't going anywhere (but who would want to?). I rescheduled my Monday dental appointment because I'm not driving anywhere in this mess, even if I didn't have car issues at the moment (something is letting in rain water so we had to cover my car). I have to feel for the food/pizza/shopping/etc. delivery people who have no choice but to be out in this.

So far, everything around here is alright. It will depend on if we get lots of constant rain. If it does, the creek at the end of our road will flood and there will be no way out.

Our basement started to flood previously, so that is also a possibility. The power goes out a lot during storms, so we now have a Generac stand-by generator, and plenty of firewood on hand for the wood stove. Our freezer is well stocked.

If we get lots of wind during any of the storms, there is no telling what may happen. So far the burn scar has not affected us directly. Anything can happen if it continues to rain on a consistent basis. Hopefully, that will not be the case.

Checked the driveway this morning... part of it looks to be about 1" underwater, which is not surprising, given the buckets of rain earlier this morning.

DH normally goes to the farmers' market on Saturday mornings, and he should/would be leaving soon. Let's see if he can get to his car without getting his feet soaked....

Tell him to wear his rubber gardening Wellies. I had a pair for many, many years, and finally discovered last year that they had become stiff with rot. They had been wonderful, not just for gardening, but also for use in the snow, and puddles. They were 100% waterproof and I ordered them a couple sizes larger so I could also insulate them, by wearing my old Eddie Bauer down socks inside them. Eddie Bauer stopped selling their down socks many years ago. That's how old they were.

So anyway, I searched on Amazon, and finally found a pair quite similar. I can't imagine being without them.

Edit:
I think my old ones were these: https://www.countryattire.us/h... . Had I known they were still available, I'd have ordered these, exactly.