North Bay braces for powerful weekend rainstorm

SANTA ROSA, Calif. - Though Pacific Gas and Electric has ample spare trucks in its North Bay service yards, most of the fleet is already strategically placed out in the field, awaiting the weekend storm.

Ron Richardson, regional vice president of PG&E for the North Coast, said the weather system will bring strong winds and heavy rain.

"We're expecting high winds, some winds gusting up to 50 and 55 mph. And we haven't seen those type of winds for a long period of time," said Richardson. "But, with that, we're also gonna see a lot of rain. Rains that we haven't seen in this territory in for a while. What I'm hearing now is somewhere between 3 and 5 inches of rain in some communities."

During storm recovery, it's all about location.

"We're also looking at materials, making sure that we have enough poles, transformers, and wires so when we do see an event like this we are ready, and we're staffed," said Richardson.

Though rain can bring the possibilities of landslides, especially in wildfire burn scar areas, Santa Rosa Fire Marshal Paul Lowenthal said this weekend's forecasted rain shouldn't trigger landslides.

But serious wind is expected.

"We’re expecting some significant winds, not only in the mountains and the hills around the city, but also in the valley floors and that's not just for Santa Rosa, but most of the Bay Area," said Lowenthal.

Batten down the hatches, including large inflated holiday decorations around homes.

"We are actually asking residents, before they go to bed tonight, to actually deflate their inflatables so that it doesn't end up either in your neighbor's yard or blown out into the street," said Lowenthal.

Sonoma Water has decided to lower the Russian River dam because of the anticipated rainfall. The dam is usually raised in the spring or early summer to preserve the river flow for later use during summer and fall.

In this case, the anticipated flows from the storm could be sufficient to cause damage to the dam. As a result the water will flow freely flow down the Russian River to the Pacific.