photo credit: Noah Abrams/KRCB
A swollen Russian River from a vantage point in Forestville. 

It was mid-morning when the Russian River in Guerneville touched up to about 36 and-a-half feet above the banks; inundating low lying homes, roads, and vineyards along the river.

Westside Road near the Hacienda Bridge, where a home slid into the rushing flood waters amidst the heavy rains on Tuesday, saw a steady stream of interested onlookers, including the owner of a neighboring home.

"I saw what happened on the news," the neighbor said. "That's how I found out. That and my my neighbor who sent me information. And then I came up today to get some uh documents out of the house."

Neither the wrecked residence, nor the home next door, were occupied when the landslide took place.

Looking from across the river on the noisy Hacienda Bridge towards the muddy brown cliffside where the house once stood: sisters Laurie Brady and Jenny Kreisher said they grew up in the house in the early 1970's.

"Somebody contacted us, a friend of ours, who said, 'We think your house fell in the river.' And we're like, 'Oh no. No, it couldn't have done that, she's crazy,'" said Brady. "The house has been through a lot over the [years], I mean it's stood up for a long time."

Brady and Kreisher said the record-setting 1986 flood, while sparing the house, convinced their aging mother to sell the now obliterated home that same year.  

With the rain cleared and sun shining, many river residents and passersby were surveying the rushing waters and soaked streets, from Steelhead Beach to 1st Street in Guerneville, including one cyclist evading the barriers on Westside Road.

"I went out and back till the flooded valley over there on Mount Jackson Road," the cyclist told KRCB News. "But beautiful views of the flooded vineyard out there. It's just it's like glass and it's so wide, you know. It was real pretty seeing the river from at this level."

As of Wednesday afternoon, evacuation orders from the Sonoma County Sheriff's Office remained in place for areas below the 36 foot flood mark.

Many had moved cars away from low spots, and RVs normally parked near river's edge at places like the River Bend Resort and Mirabel RV park in Forestville were moved to higher ground.

National Weather Service meteorologist Brayden Murdock said even with the rain break, water is still making it's way into river system.

"The Russian River slows in from Mendocino County, so we're still getting rainfall coming from the higher elevations in that area building in into the Russian River, and that's affecting areas downstream," Murdock said. "So I think of the crest near Guerneville as well as near Santa Rosa."

Murdock said river levels are expected to fall through Thursday morning, but a smaller storm system is forecast to pass through Sonoma County starting Thursday.

"We could see some of those water levels build back up," Murdock said. "Probably not to the extremes that we've seen from the previous two events, but something that we're going to continue to keep an eye on. And then afterwards, we do start to see some drying out in our forecast, and hopefully, they'll get a lot of those areas out of flood stage as we start to see a bit of a break from the rain."

The wet weather is expected to give way to cold conditions for the coming weekend; overnight lows are forecast near freezing around Sonoma County; and a flood watch is in place until 1 p.m. Friday.