Sacramento is at 199% of normal rainfall for the year. The impact on infrastructure has been dramatic, levee projects scheduled for future years are happening NOW. Trucks hauling rock are a common sight these days as levee repairs and rain continued.The post office in Nicolaus. I watched the black car for a while as the two men inside tried to figure out how to get their mail. They pulled into the parking lot, both doors opened, and the men looked out at the 6″ deep water. The doors closed, the car left the parking lot and stopped in the middle of the road, one man got out and opened the trunk – I’m sure he got out his rubber boots.In the middle of the night, a tree fell on Justin’s street and we lost power for half a day.Meanwhile, the daffodils are blooming.Rain, rain, go away. Not yet. An isolated storm heading for E Nicolaus.

While the mandated evacuation order has been lifted for the Oroville Dam emergency, school will not be back in session until at least Feb 21. In addition to the massive repair effort going on at the dam, there is also a flurry of activity along the nearby Feather River levee. Justin took these pictures today. Compare them to the pictures from last Sunday to see the contrast. At Verona, the confluence, the water is farther across the road.Great sheets of plastic go down first:Followed by gravel:Sacramento is at 188% of normal rainfall which will increase because rain is in the forecast. Fingers are crossed!

On Sunday afternoon, Justin asked me if I wanted to drive along the levee to look at the water. This turned out to be about two hours before the evacuation of 188,000 people from upriver as the Oroville Dam emergency spillway continued to erode.On the other side of the levee, water was seeping under the levee into the farmland or …This pump is ordinarily used to pump water out of the river to irrigate farmland, but this is not the growing season so the pumps are turned off. However, the river is so high, it’s creating back pressure on the pumps causing water from the river to flow backwards through the pumps (thank you Justin for this explanation).We counted at least 12 markers like this one along the levee. They note trouble spots that inspectors need to repeatedly check – and there are a lot of inspectors keeping watch.Boils are spots where the water has soaked through the levee and comes bubbling up on the other side. When discovered, the boil is ringed with sand bags in an effort to stabilize it.The confluence of the Feather and Sacramento Rivers is at Verona, but there is serious leakage going on with the water now halfway across the road.Days ago, farmers started moving their equipment to higher ground.An overpass (with no on/off ramps) near Justin’s house:There are some beautiful homes on the river side of the levee – a risky location in times like this.There were big U-Haul trucks at the ready everywhere.A neighbor of Justin’s asked for help to move some equipment. The first stop was the local gas station; Justin wanted me to fill up also. We got there just before it became clogged with customers.The exodus was agonizingly slow along Hwy 70 as the evacuation continued. What should have been a 45 minute drive from Marysville to Sacramento took 5 hours on Sunday night.The mandated evacuation did not apply to E Nicolaus. Wheatland, 12 miles north, was recommended evacuation. So we sat tight and hoped for the best.