photo credit: Sonoma Water

The heavy rains pouring on the North Bay show little sign of letting up before the weekend.

Story of this storm so far, so says the National Weather Service's Dial Hoang: stand outside in Santa Rosa and you'll be soaked.

"This rain we're seeing across the North Bay, it really comes from a plume of moisture that's coming in from the subtropics," Hoang said. "The North Bay is really on the edge of that plume of moisture."

Step out in San Francisco and it's a different situation, Hoang said.

"We have all this rain and all these flooding impacts on the North Bay, but you go to San Francisco, you go further south, it's basically been more scattered or a lot less in terms of rainfall totals," Hoang said.

Hoang is a meteorologist with the National Weather Service's Bay Area office.

While the rainfall totals have been impressive, that hasn't yet translated into catastrophic flooding forecasts, but Hoang said that could change.

"We are already seeing a flooding impacts on these rivers and small creeks and streams across Sonoma County," Hoang said. "In addition to the Russian River in Guerneville, we also have the Russian River in Geyserville, which is now expected to see some minor flooding over the next couple days. We are looking at the Friday afternoon to the Saturday morning time frame when we expect to see the crest of the rivers."

Sonoma County's director of emergency management, Jeff DuVall, said his office is ready to respond to burst banks along the Russian River.

"We were looking that it was gonna come up to that monitor action stage," DuVall said. "At that point, we would start having conversations. What does that look like if the river keeps going up into one of the three flood stages, and start our action list of notifications and pre-staging of equipment if we need to for that."

Also in effect, a high surf advisory, Hoang noted.

"For people who are going to the beach, we do advise you to stay out the water if you're an inexperienced swimmer," Hoang said. "Never turn your back to the ocean and watch out for sneaker waves."

And as always when it comes to driving during rains storms, Hoang said, "turn around, don't drown."

"We have already gotten reports of road closures across Sonoma County because of the high water, and we urge everyone to respect those closed roads," Hoang said.

The rainfall totals in Sonoma County during this atmospheric river have been impressive, according to National Weather Service meteorologist Brayden Murdock.

“Especially with Sonoma County where this has been kind of the bullseye of the system thus far, there’s been a lot of impressive numbers. The Sonoma County airport has just actually gotten over that 10-inch mark, since the beginning of the rainfall. It is at 10-point-one-five right now. Downtown Santa Rosa is at 9-point-nine-one," said Murdock on Thursday afternoon.

Further into the hills and the West County have even bigger rain totals: Venado, north of Guerneville had more than 15 inches on Thursday afternoon, and a site outside of Occidental had more than 12-inches of rain.

Murdock says wind gusts have been about 30 miles per hour in the valleys and up to 60 miles per hour at the highest elevations. The National Weather Service predicted strong winds again on Friday. Murdock says the momentum of the storm system picks up on Friday.

“If you think of it as like the hand on the fire hose, the hand is steady right now, but tomorrow it will actually start moving," said Murdock, referring to Friday's conditions.

Three-day rainfall totals for Santa Rosa are set to break all-time totals for the time records have been kept.

As the atmospheric river continues to douse Sonoma County with record amounts of rain, there are concerns about flooding along the Russian River.

“The National Weather Service has issued a Flood Warning for Guerneville, for minor flooding. Minor Flood Stage is 32 feet, and the last time I looked at the modeling for the flooding, it was at 34 feet," said Karen Hancock, Public Information Officer for the Sonoma County Fire Protection District, from the field in Guerneville midday on Friday.

“We’re just checking out the area, making sure everybody is safe down here in Guerneville. We do have our fire station here, right on Armstrong Woods Road. We do have our swift water rescue team ready here as well, with boats and jet skis," said Hancock.

“Even if it is at the minor stage, it will be tonight and over the evening hours in the dark, which makes it a lot more difficult, especially for our firefighters and our emergency responders. It increases the dangerous level quite a bit when we have to do rescues and things in the dark," Hancock said.

She recommends that everyone sign up for SoCo Alerts, as well as Nixle alerts for your area.