Another round of wind and rain is expected to drench the North Bay Monday night, but those in Sonoma County who live near the Glass Fire burn zone areas, can breathe a sigh of relief.
Officials say there’s net enough rain in the forecast to trigger major flooding.
“We do have a lot of houses with hilly, sloping on the side, I don’t see sandbags around here that much,” said Sharad Sharma of Santa Rosa. “I haven’t heard anything close to this area about landslide, about the mudslide thing.”
A blue tarp covered the roof of a home on Mountain Hawk Drive that’s still in the process of rebuilding after the 2020 Glass Fire. Rain is on the way again, for the second time in two weeks, after an atmospheric river recently slammed the North Bay with heavy rain.
This time – the Sonoma County Fire District says there’s no concerns about dangerous flash flooding.
“We would never not to tell people to be concerned and on the lookout and be cautious but we’re not under some of those warnings and heavy concerns that we were last week,” said Cyndi Foreman of the Sonoma County Fire District.
Last year, four wildfires burned roughly 125,000 acres of land in Sonoma County, land that could be susceptible to flash flooding and debris flows.
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“The higher rain rates would be very localized and would still fall well below the criteria for significant flash flooding or debris flow concerns that we would have in the burn scars,” said Foreman.
The rain was already coming down in the town of Guerneville, where Barbara Dehaas was more worried about losing power than any potential flooding.
“I’ve been through a couple of floods where we need that stuff but around here you got to be prepared to have your emergency stuff ready for when stuff happens because we don’t know always what’s going to happen,” said the Rio Nido resident.
No evacuation orders have been issued and not many sandbags in sight either.
The Sonoma County Fire District says thankfully, they don’t expect to see a significant amount of rain in a short period of time.
