El Ni\u00f1o<\/a> expanding and pushing local and sea levels up.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n\u201cWe have that thermal expansion of the water from the El Ni\u00f1o, and that anomaly has been helping keep the water a bit higher than initially forecast,\u201d Rachel Kennedy, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service\u2019s Bay Area office, said.<\/p>\n
The flooding is happening on sunny days, without storms to exacerbate impacts, and when the region isn\u2019t experiencing the year\u2019s highest tides.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cIn Northern California, we\u2019re pretty much running as high as we ever have been, including record-breaking October tides,\u201d Swain said.<\/p>\n
This winter\u2019s king tides fall around Thanksgiving and Christmas. Swain said there\u2019s a \u201cvery high likelihood of widespread and potentially serious coastal flooding\u201d during those windows.<\/p>\n
\nParts of Marin County underwater\n<\/p>\n
Kennedy called Marin County a flooding \u201chotspot.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cIt is starting to reach some people\u2019s homes,\u201d she said. \u201cSo, it\u2019s more moderate than minor since people\u2019s lives are being impacted.\u201d<\/p>\n
On Thursday afternoon, floodwaters blocked entrances to Highway 101 in north Sausalito. Cars and buses sloshed through the water and kayakers took to the new waterways.<\/p>\n
At the tides\u2019 peak on Thursday around 2 p.m., workers from El Tucan Tacos and Beer, a Mexican restaurant on the edge of a small harbor in San Rafael, raced to move their cars as a river of water separated the restaurant from the street.<\/p>\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/10\/GettyImages-2301814093-96c4f076-scaled.jpg\")
Floodwaters covered roads in Marin County as residents kayaking on the bike trail during high tide between Sausalito and Mill Valley in California, United States on October 27, 2026.\u00a0(Tayfun Coskun\/Anadolu via Getty Images)<\/p>\n
For three days, employee Marilyn Garcia watched water race down the street, stopping lunch service and racing to protect the waterside restaurant.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cYesterday was bad, but today it got totally worse and a little higher,\u201d Garcia said. \u201cRight now, we have no entrance for anyone to get in or a way for people to pick up food.\u201d<\/p>\n
The restaurant recently poured a cement barrier to block water from entering the business, but Garcia said water seeps up underneath the patio near the water\u2019s edge.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe have sandbags, but it\u2019s getting hectic,\u201d Garcia said. \u201cThe water is still coming under and in the restaurant.\u201d<\/p>\n
Low-lying parts of San Rafael flooded most days this week. Agencies blocked roads until water receded, and water surged out of utility holes and rippled onto front yards, said Kate Hagemann, a climate adaptation and resilience planner with San Rafael.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe are trying to focus on preparedness, since these are not the highest tides of the year,\u201d Hagemann said. \u201cWe have a large part of San Rafael that is lower than the bay.\u201d<\/p>\n
\nA preview of what\u2019s to come\n<\/p>\n
Hagemann said Thursday\u2019s flooding could be the worst this week, and she expects several dozen days of flooding over the next few months.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cWe may have high tide flooding like this maybe 20 or 30 times this winter, and so we don\u2019t necessarily have staff capacity to be out directing traffic every time this happens,\u201d Hagemann said.\u00a0<\/p>\n
In the meantime, Hagemann said that residents should take caution and pay attention to areas that flood.<\/p>\n
\u201cJust because the road is open, it doesn\u2019t necessarily mean that it\u2019s totally safe to just barrel through at 40 miles an hour,\u201d Hagemann said. \u201cI want to stress that everyone needs to keep up awareness and not drive through water that they can\u2019t see through.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"El Ni\u00f1o and a full moon this week raised Bay Area tides, causing moderate coastal flooding and swamping…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":899426,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[47],"tags":[192,79],"class_list":["post-899425","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-environment","tag-environment","tag-science"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/899425","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=899425"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/899425\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/899426"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=899425"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=899425"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=899425"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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<\/p>\n