Flood — Madera, California

2023-03-10 · near Oneals, Madera, California

Event narrative

California Highway Patrol reported 40 feet of mud on Road 200.

Wider weather episode

A large upper trough off the Pacific Northwest coast pulled up a deep moisture fetch from the Pacific Ocean which spread inland into central California on March 9 and 10. This atmospheric river event produced 4 to 8 inches of liquid precipitation across much of the Sierra Nevada. With this moisture being of tropical origin, snow levels were high and were above 9500 feet for much of this event. The rain falling on top of a large snowpack over the Sierra Nevada produced a large amount of runoff resulting in widespread catastrophic flooding over the San Joaquin Valley, the valley facing slopes as well as across the Sierra foothills with over 100 reports of flooding being reported to WFO Hanford. The conditions were made worse by the fact that soils already very saturated over the lower elevations from previous storms. In addition, the Sierra foothills generally picked up between 2 and 5 inches of rainfall while the San Joaquin Valley had between 0.75 to 1.5 inches of rainfall. Flash Flood Emergencies were issued for the Springville area in Tulare County and for the Kernville and Wofford Heights area in Kern County near Lake Isabella for life threatening flooding caused by heavy rainfall on top of snowmelt runoff from higher elevations. By the time the deep moisture fetch moved out of the area during the evening of March 10, several communities were evacuated due to the widespread flooding and numerous roads were closed for several days either because of flooding or because repairs were required to make the roads usable.

View location on OpenStreetMap → (37.1300, -119.6900)

Source: NOAA Storm Events Database, event_id 1076274. Narrative written by the NWS forecast office that issued the report.