Heavy Rain — El Dorado, California

2012-12-01 to 2012-12-02 · near Shingle Spgs, El Dorado, California

Event narrative

Several series of waves containing heavy rainfall hit northern California during a high impact atmospheric river event. The last series of waves that occurred Dec. 1st and Dec. 2nd dropped an additional 1-2 inches of rainfall in the motherlode region...on top of the 4-8 inches that had already fallen previously in the first series of waves. Grounds became overly saturated, which caused trees to collapse from saturated soils and heavy absorption of water. At approximately 8 am on Dec. 4th, one oak tree fell on a vehicle that was traveling 40 mph in a Ford F-150 pickup truck on westbound Green Valley Road, approaching Ponderosa Road, killing a 48 year old man after failing to avoid the falling oak tree. The other passenger in the back of the vehicle, a 10 year old boy, was unharmed.

Wider weather episode

A warm atmospheric river event began early Wednesday, November 28th with an initial wave of rain and snow at higher elevations above 6500 ft. A second wave came through Thursday evening, November 29th through Friday, November 30th, bringing heavier rain and more snow to the highest elevations above 7000 ft. The third wave came through Saturday evening December 1st through Sunday, December 2nd, bringing periods of moderate to heavy rainfall, flooding from overly saturated grounds and high river/stream water levels, and snow above 7000 ft. Windy conditions persisted through the event, especially Wednesday through Saturday, causing trees and tree branches to fall down and localized power outages affecting approximately 10K people. Winds were reported to reach as high as 60-70 mph in the valley/foothill region, and over 100 mph in the mountains.

View location on OpenStreetMap → (38.6700, -120.9300)

Source: NOAA Storm Events Database, event_id 418625. Narrative written by the NWS forecast office that issued the report.