On Monday, KRON4 brought you a report about the El Nino conditions shaping up in the Pacific and what that means for the year ahead.

On Tuesday night, we take another look, this time along the Napa River, where devastating flooding in years past prompted officials to invest in major flood control measures.

KRON4 Meteorologist John Shrable explains why El Nino does not necessarily guarantee flooding, let alone rainy conditions.

“It was really scary, but also really great to see the community coming around our church and coming around everyone as we were experiencing this crazy devastation,” churchgoer Jamie Hooker said.

Hooker attends and works at Hillside Community Church. Last year, she could see the glow of the Tubbs Fire just over this hillside.

This after a heavy rainy season when the church had to install new drainage because of flooding, all in the same year. 

“We see floods down at the front of the church, we see fires back behind the church, so where we’re positioned is really a place where we get to see all of that,” Hooker said.

Flooding and fire–two things residents in the North Bay have had to become accustomed to. 

And in an El Nino year, these two weather events combined pose the potential of debris flows from burn scars that can clog waterways during flooding events.

“It’s anticipated that with climate change and with these fires what used to be called a 100-year storm can now be called a 10-year storm and the statistics will need to be changed,” Napa County Flood Control Deputy Director Phil Miller said.

Napa is no stranger to high water.

“There were over 22 recorded floods in the history of Napa,” Miller said.

Just over 10 years ago, the city completed a massive series of walls, gates, and channels to help direct floodwaters through and out of the downtown core.

At first glance, it may just look like any other city park, but when the Napa River rises high enough, this actually becomes the bottom of the channel and the gates will close, helping to protect the city from the rising waters.

“We saw pretty much this river here go all the way under the bridge there and cover the garbage cans that are over there,” Napa resident Amelia Humphreys said. “All those cars that are over there would be under water as well.”

But since completion, the gates have only been drawn a single time. And it wasn’t during an El Nino winter, but the following year, which despite being very rainy, was actually a La Nina–when the ocean waters near us are actually cooler.

“On a very strong El Nino year, we do tend to get additional precipitation in Northern California, which happened in the winter of 2016, whereas in the winter of 2017, where we had a record year, that was actually a La Nina year where it’s pretty much a crapshoot as to what you’re going to get,” Miller said.

What’s the lesson here? El Nino conditions often do coincide with flooding conditions.

But in a changing climate, scenes like those from the historic 1997 El Nino may become more common, El Nino or not.

“I think that we’ve seen hits or misses with El Nino, it hasn’t been really that consistent, so I think we’re wondering what it could bring this year,” grape grower Heather Phillips said. “There’s nothing on the horizon.”

For this deeply agricultural valley, grape growers such as Phillips say they are thankful for the rain an El Nino can bring.

But climate change could alter the characteristics of an El Nino, potentially making the weather impact more extreme.

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