Flooding, outages test Tiburon Peninsula's preparedness
- Francisco Martinez
- Jan 5
- 6 min read
Updated: 1 day ago
Note: This article was originally posted Jan. 5 and updated Jan. 8. A four-day deluge of king tides and atmospheric-river storms Jan. 1-4 brought the worst coastal flooding to Marin County in nearly three decades, submerging Highway 101 and local roads while temporarily knocking out 911 service countywide.
But Tiburon and Belvedere officials said their towns were largely spared, experiencing only the typical flooding hot spots along Tiburon Boulevard and downtown Beach Road, plus isolated incidents including a transformer issue in downtown Tiburon and a close call with Beach Road breaching in Belvedere.
In Strawberry, flooding forced Marin sheriff’s deputies to block off the Redwood Highway frontage road from De Silva Island Drive to the Chevron car wash during the peak king tide Jan. 3, as vehicles sitting in at least 2 feet of water were temporarily abandoned in the fully submerged roadway and Seminary Drive park-and-ride.
Tiburon Town Manager Greg Chanis and Public Works Operations Manager Patrick Kerslake said in interviews last week that the peninsula handled the storm well. Besides occasional fallen trees, the area saw only expected flooding at Tiburon Boulevard’s inbound lanes near the 76 gas station, adjacent Greenwood Cove Drive, and at Beach Road downtown.
Inbound boulevard flooding Jan. 3 narrowed traffic to only partial use of the left lane, while at least two vehicles appeared to be abandoned in at least a foot of water along Greenwood Cove Drive. Cars mostly avoided the Beach Road entrance to The Boardwalk shopping center, though full-sized trucks splashed through bumper-deep water.
“The flooding we did experience was predictable,” Chanis said. “The Blackfield intersection is problematic, as is the downtown intersection, but other than that, we weathered the storm pretty well.”
Officials have suggested the flood-prone area at Tiburon Boulevard and Greenwood Cove might only be fixable with a seawall, with considerable multijurisdictional hurdles and expenses. Meanwhile, Tiburon has been upgrading its storm-drain systems.
Belvedere City Manager Robert Zadnik said his city saw no serious wind or rainfall impacts, with Public Works crews spending extra time clearing storm drains, sweeping and monitoring between storms.
Water came within about a foot of breaching onto Beach Road Jan. 3. Zadnik said Belvedere was “very lucky” that rain eased by the time king tides arrived.
The city’s priority remains its planned $4.4 million seawall-stabilization project at Beach Road, slated to begin this summer.
“Over time, we know we need to strengthen and raise both the Beach Road and San Rafael levees, but those projects are very costly, and the city’s resources are limited,” Zadnik said.
In 2022, residents defeated a charter-city conversion and real-estate transfer tax to fund work to rebuild, reinforce and raise the two streets. Belvedere was later selected for a $15.6 million federal grant, but the Trump administration pulled funding before the money was obligated.
Record-breaking tides across Bay Area
The San Francisco gauge recorded a high tide 2.56 feet above normal Jan. 3, the fourth-highest on record and matching levels unseen since Feb. 6, 1998, according to the National Weather Service.
Three Bay Area stations set all-time high-tide records Jan. 3: Redwood City at 2.70 feet above normal, Richmond at 2.67 feet above normal and Martinez at 2.46 feet above normal. Point Reyes and Monterey recorded their third-highest tides on record, both at 2.73 feet and 2.43 feet above normal, respectively. All 10 Bay Area tide stations saw tides ranking in the top 10 highest on record.
Grace Ledwith, Tiburon’s climate action and sustainability coordinator, said in a Jan. 7 email that both increased local flooding and intense rainfall are “only becoming more acute as these weather patterns and climate impacts continue.”
“As the town begins its Sea Level Rise Vulnerability Assessment and Adaptation Plan, addressing existing flood conditions is essential not only for public safety, but also for mitigating and reducing the ecological impact of these flooding events,” Ledwith said, referencing the plan the town is in the process of creating as required by Senate Bill 272.
Tiburon received a $593,877 grant from the California Ocean Protection Council last year to develop the plan, which the town expects to have completed by October 2027.
Ways to stay prepared include regular home maintenance, from cleaning gutters and downspouts, to evaluating home-hardening resources like barriers or flood-control devices, she said.
“Additionally, staying informed about local flood advisories and preparing your home or business and adjusting schedules as needed is incredibly important to reduce negative impacts; especially for those that reside or work in areas historically affected by tidal or storm-driven flooding,” Ledwith wrote.
Countywide impacts
As the tide crested before noon Jan. 3, Highway 101 near Lucky Drive in Corte Madera became entirely submerged and remained paralyzed for hours. Both directions of the eight-lane highway filled with 2-3 feet of water, with multiple cars stranded and at least one vehicle floating away near the Lucky Drive exit. California Highway Patrol held traffic before reducing flow to a single lane in both directions. By 2:30 p.m., receding waters allowed limited passage.
The southbound side was closed entirely for several hours, causing miles of freeway backups that bled into neighborhood streets as drivers attempted to skirt the freeway by cutting through Larkspur and Corte Madera only to find additional closures, including at Doherty Drive near Redwood High School as Corte Madera Creek overflowed.
County officials said hundreds of structures were impacted countywide. U.S. Rep. Jared Huffman, D-San Rafael, toured hardest-hit areas with county officials Jan. 5 and said the county was “caught off guard by the scale of this.”
Huffman said National Weather Service and county modeling about tide levels and storm surge proved inaccurate, with floodwaters going “places where they didn’t think it was going to go.” He noted that MarinHealth Medical Center was rendered inaccessible by flooding.
“You certainly wouldn’t want to have needed to go to the emergency room to have a kid or something else during any of those moments, because there was no way to get to the hospital,” he said.
More than 7,600 Pacific Gas and Electric Co. customers in Marin and Sonoma counties lost power because of storm damage, though more than 90% were restored within six hours, PG&E spokesperson Megan McFarland said.
Near Greenbrae, The Grateful Dog daycare — owned by Tiburon residents Karla Rivera Cervantes and Ernie Cervantes — was among businesses impacted by flooding. The business launched a GoFundMe to help pay for repairs and preventive improvements. Donors had raised more than $8,000 of an $11,000 goal by press time, though Rivera Cervantes in a Jan. 8 phone interview estimated upward of $100,000 in damages following flooding.
“This is pretty serious for us right now,” she said, adding that the aftermath has left her asking: “Can we survive?”
On the Tiburon Peninsula, Nugget Market manager-in-charge Didier Esquivel said Jan. 7 the grocery store encountered no flooding or power outages despite water near The Cove shopping center. Similarly, nearby wine bar Mog Asu reported no flooding or outages, though the bar shared The Grateful Dog’s GoFundMe on social media.
Kerslake said Jan. 5 that no crews were called in to address storm-related emergencies as everything “really held together pretty darn well” and “there’s not a laundry list of things to go out and resolve.”
The only notable infrastructure problem, Kerslake said, was a Main Street closure Jan. 2 after the town received a call about steam emerging from a vault for a recently installed transformer, part of the Angel Island-Tiburon Ferry Co.’s fleet-electrification efforts.
PG&E crews shut off the transformer that day and reopened the street, but Main Street will need to close again for workers to inspect and potentially repair the transformer, Kerslake said.
“It’s turned off now, but it didn’t affect anything as there’s no infrastructure downstream for it,” Kerslake said.
Some downtown Tiburon businesses experienced power outages, including clothing boutique Yema and the Angel Island-Tiburon Ferry Co. Others — including Caffe Acri, Servino Trattoria, Cinelounge and Made 2 Measure Communications — avoided outages, their owners said.
Meanwhile, floodwaters submerged an AT&T communications hub in San Rafael about 8:30 p.m. Jan. 4, crippling emergency dispatch and forcing officials to urge residents to go directly to fire stations if they needed emergency aid, according to San Rafael police Lt. Scott Eberle. Service was restored by 1 a.m. Jan. 5.
Weather outlook
Early weather projections indicate drier and warmer conditions later this month, with a high near 60 degrees Jan. 14, according to the National Weather Service.
A precipitation outlook released Jan. 7 projects the Tiburon Peninsula — and most of Northern California — has a 50-60% chance of seeing lower-than-normal precipitation from Jan. 15-21 and a 40-50% chance of above-normal temperatures during the same period.
Reach Francisco Martinez at 415-944-4634.