Another strong, wet and windy storm is expected tonight, and the Santa Clara Valley Water District is taking precautions to prepare for possible storm impacts. The National Weather Service has issued a flash flood watch for Santa Clara County. Residents should be aware that the storm has the potential to cause creek flooding issues, especially on small channels that tend to rise quickly with intense rains.
Our staff will be monitoring this storm closely. To coordinate our monitoring and response activities, our Emergency Operations Center will open on Friday night at 11 p.m. at a Level 3 Monitoring Level, which is the lowest activation level for our EOC.
Santa Clara Valley Water District crews have worked all year to prepare our creeks for winter rains. We are dedicated to keeping residents and businesses safe through our flood protection programs.
In preparation for this series of storms, all five of our sandbag sites were stocked. Staff will continue to monitor these sites and replenish them throughout the weekend, as necessary. In addition, cities around the county operate an additional 19 sandbag sites.
Our maintenance staff stands ready with heavy equipment to respond to reports of downed trees or large debris flows in locations where we have property rights. We are monitoring streams for blockages at key bridges and culverts. We appreciate the public’s help as our eyes and ears to alert us to obstructions in the creeks and to prevent flooding. To report issues in creeks, residents can call 408-630-2378 or submit a service request to Access Valley Water.
As of Friday afternoon, our ten reservoirs have a combined storage of 42 percent of their full capacity. This leaves a significant amount of storage space in most of our reservoirs to capture the expected storm runoff, including Anderson Reservoir.
Visit our website (http://www.valleywater.org/floodready/) for flood safety tips, current reservoir levels and stream flows, and maps to free sandbag sites.
This information has been shared with all cities in the county.