GILROY
– Another 1.43 inches of rain soaked
”
garlic town
”
and the South Valley area over the weekend, causing mud to slide
and trees to fallalong the private roads and fire-weakened
hillsides of Uvas Canyon.
”
The roads held up pretty good. We had a few trees down and minor
mudslides scattered around Uvas and Croy (roads), but everything is
cleaned up now,
”
said Terri Amcelwaine, a Santa Clara County road maintenance
dispatcher.
GILROY – Another 1.43 inches of rain soaked “garlic town” and the South Valley area over the weekend, causing mud to slide and trees to fallalong the private roads and fire-weakened hillsides of Uvas Canyon.
“The roads held up pretty good. We had a few trees down and minor mudslides scattered around Uvas and Croy (roads), but everything is cleaned up now,” said Terri Amcelwaine, a Santa Clara County road maintenance dispatcher.
Most of the downpour came Friday afternoon and tapered off as the weekend progressed, bringing rainfall totals for the Gilroy area to nearly 9.5 inches since July 1 and 6 inches for all of December.
Forecasters say remnants from another approaching storm should bring one-tenth of an inch of rain to the valleys at about noon Tuesday, with chances of rain increasing through Christmas and into the latter days of the week.
“As the week goes along, weather conditions (inland) that act as a wall will break down and lead to heavier rain later in the week,” said National Weather Service Meteorologist Rick Canepa.
The approaching storm is elongated, stretching from California to British Colombia and making it more difficult to retain its strength as it approaches the coastline and meets up with other weather patterns.
“This doesn’t mean the door to wet weather is closing. It just means this storm will be a lot weaker than what we’ve been seeing,” Canepa said. “We still have El Niño conditions, and we still have to get through January, February and March.”
John Ferreira, operations chief for the California Department of Forestry at Morgan Hill, said his station had not been informed of any homes sliding or roads being taken out in the Uvas Canyon area that endured a 3,127-acre wildfire in the fall. Nonetheless, the area remains unstable since much of the vegetation was consumed by the fire or removed by crews that created fire breaks during the blaze.
“It’s just very muddy up there,” Ferreira said.
On Monday morning, former Croy Road resident Sue Guist was waiting to hear from husband Roy, who was evaluating conditions of the area where their home burned down in the September blaze. In recent days, the Guists have been filling weakened parts of their private road with rocks in order to control erosion and divert the flow of water away from the roadway.
“Our first responsibility is to the earth and then to the county to keep our hill from sliding into drinking water supplies,” Guist said. “We’re just trying to be good stewards of the area we loved and lived in for so many years.”
Like more than 30 area residents, the Guists lost their Croy Road home in the Uvas Canyon blaze last fall.
“It was our Camelot, and now it’s gone,” Guist said.
Like many other residents of the blaze-burdened area, the Guists have been using seeds distributed by the Santa Clara Valley Water District to replant the hillside and protect the many private roads that jet out from county roads such as Croy.
These private efforts were supported with hydroseeding done by the water district that was nearly completed before the rains. Hydroseeding was done six to eight feet from the roads while hand crews seeded fire breaks. In addition to spraying seeds on the hillsides, mulch also was placed on the ground.
“It’s not going to sprout immediately, but the idea is to keep water from going underneath the soil and lifting the ground,” water district spokesperson Mike Di Marco said. “We were up there Friday afternoon. Based on our visual, it’s held up pretty good, which is good news for the residents.”
Di Marco said he heard secondhand that one homeowner had “a little erosion on their property.”
Other news in groundwater- and erosion-related matters is that the 10 county reservoirs are at less than half of their capacity, meaning area creeks and rivers do not figure to overflow and cause flooding. The Uvas Reservoir, however, is at 98 percent of its capacity, Di Marco said.
“We will not let it overflow. We’ll slowly release water into Uvas Creek,” Di Marco said. “Even if the reservoir spills, the water goes into Uvas Creek down a spillway.”
From Uvas Creek, the water goes into the Pajaro River, which has been knonw to overflow near the town of Pajaro. From there, the water goes into Monterey Bay.
