Rain-soaked town has received more than 80 inches
Residents in Santa CruzMountains town aimto be resourceful in wettest winter
BOULDER CREEK — Even in years when drought parches most of California, rain drenches this mountain town, nestled among Big Basin State Park’s towering redwoods.
And when the winter clouds burst as they have this year, they bring downpours of epic proportions. More than 80 inches of rain has fallen on Boulder Creek since Oct. 1, making
it one of the wettest places in California. In the town’s record year of precipitation — 1889 — its 124.26 inches of rainfall rivaled that of the Amazon.
In his 41 years of living here, Ted Tahira, 78, doesn’t recall ever seeing so much wet weather as this winter.
“We had six weeks of getting wet, and in the last three days I’ve had a drippy nose,” he said following one recent series of storms as he pointed to his face, worn by years of gardening. “But Boulder Creek is a survivor.”
The community’s precarious cliff-side roads, which carry commuters on a winding 30- to 45-minute journey to Silicon Valley through verdant redwood forest and humble homesteads, are now dappled with “slide ahead” signs and fresh potholes.
Will Pi, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service, said it’s the Santa Cruz Mountains that make Boulder Creek so wet.
“All the air rises as it comes into the mountains and it just squeezes out a lot more moisture, so they get extra rainfall,” Pi said, adding that by the time the air cascades over the mountain, it’s much drier. “Usually they’ll get 5 to 6 inches in the mountains and less than an inch in San Jose, just on the other side.”
Even on its wettest days, the town’s locals stand by their community.
“We’re isolated and individualized,” said Rebekah Croll, whose family owns a farm outside of town. Croll, who lived in San Jose for 10 years, said she “couldn’t wait to get back” to Boulder Creek, despite it being five times as wet.
For much of the last five months, Boulder Creek has reeked of rain. In just the week of Feb. 13, 10 inches fell on the town and its eclectic population of about 5,000, the National Weather Service reported. That’s three and a half times the average annual rainfall in Cali- fornia’s Anza and Holtville, the two driest towns in the entire country.
There’s one gauge in the San Lorenzo Valley that picked up more rain than Boulder Creek’s, meteorologist Pi said. It sits on the outskirts of Big Basin Redwoods State Park on Empire Grade, a two-anda-half-mile toss from downtown Boulder Creek.
The gauge has recorded more than 100 inches of rain since Oct. 1. But the remote area is largely uninhabited, with the exception of the nearby Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation center.
Boulder Creek’s rain gauge — the one that has recorded 81.5 inches of rainfall this winter — lives on the side of Highway 236, a couple of miles northwest of the center of town.
Chey Houck, 29, commutes every day on the same winding artery, between her home near Big Basin and her job at the Boulder Creek Roasting Co. One night, the relentless rain knocked a tree down across the twolane pass. But Houck wasn’t stuck for long.
“Locals have chainsaws and cut the downed tree away,” she said. Now, Houck drives around with a chainsaw too.
Croll, 49, and her 27year-old daughter, Rachel — both born and raised in Boulder Creek — rely on a different kind of technology than power tools. Social media sites like Facebook have kept them up-to-date on road closures and power outages throughout the San Lorenzo Valley.
“Facebook made a big difference up here,” Rebekah Croll said. “One night we were playing dominos and had a couple of gals over. Then our lights go out. On Facebook, at least 15 people said their power went out, too.”
Added Rachel: “It’s like an instant map.”
The Crolls, who are more surprised about the damage to infrastructure than the actual amount of rainfall this winter, regularly check a Facebook page called “Ben Lomond Mountain Roads” for updates on road closures and to check that the town’s homeless stay safe during strong storms. Users of the page provide updates at least every 15 minutes, they said, adding the site has been more reliable than navigation apps like Waze.
One night, an older woman who didn’t want to drive in the dark got trapped in town, Rachel said.
“It went out on our Facebook page that she was stuck. Someone offered her a room to stay in,” Rebekah said. “A couple ended up driving her home. ... It was very, very cool to see.”
There were days where the Crolls, too, had problems driving. Rachel, a nanny for a local family, has had trouble picking up one of the children she cares for from school in Watsonville. She would often pack extra clothes and plan to stay with a friend in Aptos.
Rachel was visiting her mother when January’s Bear Creek Road flood inundated her way home to downtown Boulder Creek. She was stuck on the family farm for a couple of days. “We cooked everything on the wood stove,” she said.
And there was plenty of wood to burn; her mother chops and sells kindling to make ends meet.
On the infrequent days when the sun shines, the blonde duo ride their horses — a pair of brown and white pintos named Jessie James and Flare — from Rebekah’s home on Bear Creek Road to the heart of town on Highway 9.
“People like to see the horses,” she said, pausing to say hello to Tahira at the counter of Jenna Sue’s Café. Rebekah’s father and Tahira — a landscaper whose “specialty is knowing how many Chinese words are in the New Testament” — worked together for many years.
In the month-and-a-half deluge, Jenna Sue’s stayed warm. But 1,000 feet down the road, the interior of the Boulder Creek Roasting Co. was blasted with rain.
“We had weather inside our shop. Lots of weather. Our bathroom door literally soaked its way off the wall,” said Houck, a former handyman and avid sciencefiction writer who’s been serving the shop’s patrons under the din of Tiki lights for eight months.
She blames the ancient redwood, a town landmark that sprouts from the floor of the Boulder Creek Roasting Co. through its ceiling, for the indoor torrent. The emerald carpet surrounding the giant tree is now dotted with water stains.
“I tell people that it’s like the Rainforest Café,” Houck, a lifelong resident with bright eyes and a halfshaved head, said with a laugh. “People pay extra for that kind of experience.”