Rain returns to wine country before grapes picked for harvest
NAPA & SONOMA COUNTY, Calif. (KTVU) - October rain may not have amounted to much in inches but CHP tallied it a different way: 34 traffic accidents in Sonoma County, and that was before noon.
The first rain of the season tends to create slippery conditions on pavement that has accumulated oil during the dry months.
One of the worst crashes involved a big rig on River Road that took a curve too fast and lost its trailer, which flipped and spilled gravel onto the road.
The driver was unhurt, but the clean-up took hours.
"We're just asking people to slow down. The roads are pretty slick," CHP Officer Hugo Espinoza told KTVU, "so everyone needs to understand it's going to take longer for your vehicle to brake and to stop."
Another cause for concern: rain as a risk factor this late in the crush.
Cabernet is king in the Napa and Sonoma valleys, and a month into the harvest, it is the last to be picked.
The deep purple grapes are bulging on the vines, and at Opus One Winery in Oakville, the winemaker expressed relief the rain was light, and didn't last long.
"If it were really raining hard over a few days, then we'd have a problem," Michael Salacci told KTVU, "but it's fine, it's refreshing, like one of those spray bottles of water vapor."
Heavy rain followed by a heat spike might have been disastrous for thousands of acres still unpicked in the region because moisture trapped in the grape clusters encourages mold.
Instead, the quick round of rain re-hydrated the berries, plumping them back up.
"We didn't push it at all because we didn't expect very much rain. This has actually been very good for the vines and for people," observed Salacci, "but we will start picking the rest of the cabernet this week."
For drivers, the rain is a chilly reminder of what's to come and what to check: tire tread and windshield wipers.
Most of Sonoma County's three dozen collisions were spin-outs into embankments, trees, or other cars. All of the injuries reported were minor.