Flooding in California, February 7 to 8, 1998

In Bakersfield significant rain again led to ponding water and flooding on many secondary roadways by 2130 PST on 2/7/98. Stream flow from Panoche/Silver Creek crested at 13,000CFS on 2/7/98 at 2000 PST at a gauge height of 12 feet. The resulting flooding downstream peaked in Mendota around 1800 PST on 2/8/98. Some flooding affected State Highway 198 west of Interstate-5 in far western Fresno County. In Merced County on the 7th, 0.77" of rain occurred in the Los Banos area on the 7th with flooding south of Gustine from breached banks in Quento and Garzas Creeks and water flow across highways into homes. High water from a canal into Los Banos Creek caused some minor flooding around the City of Los Banos by 1700 PST 2/8/98. Overwhelmed drainage systems also led to significant ponded water and street flooding in Hanford in Kings County by 1800 PST on 2/8/98. The first 8 days in February for Central California were extremely wet...rainfall in the Southern Sierra Nevada and Kern County Mountains ranged from 6-12" with snowfall accumulations of 3-6 feet. The Central and Southern San Joaquin Valley received anywhere from 2-7" of rain in the same period. A few of the large totals by county are listed: Wawona in Mariposa County had 12.88"...Los Banos in Merced County had 6.55"...In Madera County Oakhurst had 10.04" while Madera had 2.60"...In Fresno County Bass Lake had 8.83" and Fresno 2.32"...Lemoore in Kings County had 2.13" of rain...In Tulare County Visalia had 2.09"...and in Kern CountyFrazier Park had 8.38" and Bakersfield had 2.02". Normals for this time period would have had only 0.32" of rain on the valley floor and roughly double that in the mountains! Merced County had assessed the first 10 days of February causing $1.8M damage in that area alone!