UPDATE 12/6/19, 7:40 p.m. — State Route 128 is now open. The road had been closed from mile marker 12 (just west of Navarro) to SR-1 due to the flooding of the Navarro River.
ORIGINAL
MENDOCINO Co., 12/6/19 — State Route 128 has been closed, from State Route 1 to 12 miles east of the 1, or just west of Navarro, due to the flooding of the Navarro River. There is no estimated time of opening.
This situation occurs often early in the rain year, before the river has a chance to breach the sandbar that develops at its mouth.
The river hasn’t flooded much, and is currently at 3.89 ft, but because the highway runs very close to the riverbank, that small rise can be enough to flood it.
Here is a graph of the river’s rise, with a projection for its continued growth, from the NOAA — they expect it to crest on Saturday.
Here is the tweet from CalTrans:
The Navarro River mouth sandbar breached shortly after noon on Saturday, Dec. 7, allowing backed-up floodwaters to drain into the Pacific. The short section of Hwy. 128 near Hwy. 1 that had been flooded for less than 24 hours was clear of flood waters by 3 PM Saturday, when I last visited the site. Caltrans tweeted an announcement at 7:24 PM Saturday that Hwy. 128 had been reopened. I have been independently observing, photographing and writing about the Navarro River flooding for the past several years. I live only a 10-minute drive from the Navarro River mouth, and have been a coast resident and photojournalist for 50 years.
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