6 days Ago
SAN RAFAEL, Calif. — Severe weather hit the Bay Area on Saturday morning. San Francisco had its first-ever tornado warning, and many areas saw damaging winds and flooding.
The storm, combined with a day of king tides, meant flooding was especially bad in low-lying communities like San Rafael. King tides occur when the sun, moon and earth are aligned and cause the strongest possible gravitational pull on the ocean. The Canal Alliance in San Rafael and the Exploratorium based in San Francisco hosted a community science event in San Rafael to track the king tides' impacts on Saturday.
"It’s an important opportunity to see for ourselves some of the vulnerabilities, and there’s places where we already see flooding," said Canal Alliance senior policy manager Carly Finkle. "Any of the options to really invest in the infrastructure to protect the community are going to be huge projects. And we need the community's awareness and buy-in and support to help direct those projects.
" San Rafael climate adaptation and resilience planner Kate Hagemann said the flooding along Mooring Road was "the highest water level" she's seen in the last few years. "The combination of the high tides, this rain, the wind — it's all sort of piling up. So, we're seeing more flooding than we've seen in other king tides," Hagemann said.
"The most important thing is people's safety, and obviously, it's a concern. Right now, we couldn't really get a fire truck or an ambulance down this street if we needed to.".
