With more rain on the way, water agencies are urging people to prepare for what winter will bring. Ian Cull reports.
With more rain on the way, water agencies are urging people to prepare for what winter will bring.
On Wednesday, Valley Water wanted to make sure South Bay residents were ready when the bigger storms hit.
“The rain is coming, winter is coming. We’ve already experienced a little bit of it,” said Brian Garcia, NWS warning coordination meteorologist
The national weather service says there isn’t a strong indicator of whether we’ll see an el Nino or la Nina this winter. While they don’t expect the historic storms the Bay Area and California saw two years ago, the NWS said the winter could prove tough to forecast.
“What I’m looking at right now is saying we’re going to be anywhere just below normal for the amount of precipitation for the season or near normal that said, all of that precipitation can come in one or two storms. And that’s the reason we’re talking about preparedness,” Garcia said.
The water agency joined San Jose city leaders to discuss what they’re doing to prepare.
“The city’s roughly 35,000 storm inlets are cleaned every year to remove debris that could block storm sewer pipes or cause harm to our waterways,” San Jose Mayor Matt Mahan said.
Local
Valley water says between June and October, its crews removed sediment and debris from waterways to clear the way for higher water flow.
“Our agency owns and manages about 333 of the county’s 800 miles of creeks and streams,” said Valley Water board chair Nai Hsueh. They offered some tips on how you should prepare including knowing where to find supplies when you need them.
Get a weekly recap of the latest San Francisco Bay Area housing news. >Sign up for NBC Bay Area’s Housing Deconstructed newsletter.
Valley water has five sandbag distribution sites, where thousands of them are ready to be picked up now and through the winter.
The locations are on its website. Last year, they gave out 140,000 sandbags and if you ever need to fill your own, the experts say only fill the bag up a third of the way.
Emergency officials suggest preparing a “go bag” in case of flooding and they suggest signing up for alerts at alertthebay.org to get them directly from the county you live in.
