Heavy rainfall floods some Fresno streets early Saturday
A one-hour-long period of heavy rainfall led to roadway flooding in several streets throughout Fresno on Saturday morning, city spokesman Mark Strandriff said.
Fresno got 0.16 inches of rain on Friday and had a 24-hour rain total of 0.95 inches by 10 a.m. Saturday at the Fresno Air Terminal, the National Weather Service in Hanford said.
During heavier rainfall around 7 to 8 a.m., several streets had water pooling, Standriff said.
“The flood control system can handle 1 inch of rain per hour and we exceeded that,” he said.
Polk and Shaw avenues west of Highway 99, Highway City in northwest Fresno and Shepherd Avenue and Champlain Drive in northeast Fresno had roadway flooding but all had cleared up by around 9 a.m., Standriff said. “It’s like when you pour a bucket of water down a drain and it takes some time for it to all go down.”
The storm dumped as much as 1.28 inches of rain on Fresno through Saturday, and Sunday should see another 0.10 to 0.25 inches of rain, said Brian Ochs, meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Hanford.
Power outages were reported throughout Fresno during the morning, Pacific Gas & Electric Co. spokesman J.D. Guidi said.
PG&E reported an outage near Palm and Nees avenues in northwest Fresno that affected around 2,400 customers around 8 a.m., Guidi said. After several hours, there were five customers affected. The cause was determined to be an underground equipment failure.
Guidi said he could not say if the equipment failure was weather-related. The outage was resolved by 6:30 p.m.
Another outage was reported around 6 p.m. Saturday in the area of Dakota and Fruit avenues. The outage affected 68 PG&E customers.
This storm will continue through Monday morning, Ochs said, and another storm system is expected Wednesday.
“This one’s a colder one but not as wet,” Ochs said.
Much of the week is expected to be in the low-to-mid 70s, but when the storm hits Wednesday night, it will drop the high temperature Thursday back into the high 60s. Wednesday’s storm is expected to last until Friday morning.
Razi Syed: 559-441-6679, @razisyed Reporter Troy Pope contributed to the story.
This story was originally published April 9, 2016 at 5:10 PM with the headline "Heavy rainfall floods some Fresno streets early Saturday."