North Bay residents on Thursday were bracing for the first major rainfall of the season in the Bay Area.
The rain is slated to hit North Bay communities early Friday morning and make its way down to the South Bay in the late morning.
City crews in Mill Valley closed off a park and ride lot because of potential flooding, so commuters are being forced to think of alternatives. One man already had it figured out.
"I’m going to park up here along the Highway 1 onramp like a lot of people do," the commuter said.
Ken Brock was filling up sandbags on Thursday and taking other measures to prepare for the wet weather.
"I patched up the roof and cleaned the gutters," he said.
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The North Bay will be hit first and the hardest by the wind and rain. That threat is why Sonoma-Marin Arborist Zach Wilder was taking action Thursday, making sure his chainsaws are in order. He said it won’t take much for the drought stricken trees to topple over.
"The general public doesn’t know how sick our trees are right now," Wilder said. "So we’re talking 200-foot-tall trees with a tap root of 6 to 10 feet. If they’re distressed or a lot of those roots are dead, a couple winds and those trees can just come over."
PG&E crews were out in Mill Valley cutting tree limbs from power lines to prevent outages during this storm. As for the roads, the California Highway Patrol said people tend to forget what it’s like to drive on them when they're slick.
"It only takes about an eighth of an inch of water to make your tires hydroplane," a CHP official said. "It doesn’t take much to lose control."
