Sonoma County is a county located in the U.S. state of California. As of the 2020 United States Census, its population was 488,863. Its seat of government and largest city is Santa Rosa. It is to the north of Marin County and the south of Mendocino County. It is west of Napa and Lake Counties.
Wine Country is the region of California, in the northern San Francisco Bay Area, known worldwide as a premier wine-growing region. The region is famed for its wineries, its cuisine, Michelin star restaurants, boutique hotels, luxury resorts, historic architecture, and culture. Viticulture and wine-making have been practiced in the region since the Spanish missionaries from Mission San Francisco Solano established the first vineyards in 1812.
Pineapple Express is a non-technical term for a meteorological phenomenon, a specific recurring atmospheric river characterized by a strong and persistent large-scale flow of warm moist air, and the associated heavy precipitation both in the waters immediately northeast of the Hawaiian Islands and extending northeast to any location along the Pacific coast of North America. A Pineapple Express is an example of an atmospheric river, which is a more general term for such relatively narrow corridors of enhanced water vapor transport at mid-latitudes around the world.
The Guadalupe River mainstem is an urban, northward flowing 14 miles (23 km) river in California whose much longer headwater creeks originate in the Santa Cruz Mountains. The river mainstem now begins on the Santa Clara Valley floor when Los Alamitos Creek exits Lake Almaden and joins Guadalupe Creek just downstream of Coleman Road in San Jose, California. From here it flows north through San Jose, where it receives Los Gatos Creek, a major tributary. The Guadalupe River serves as the eastern boundary of the City of Santa Clara and the western boundary of Alviso, and after coursing through San José, it empties into south San Francisco Bay at the Alviso Slough.
The Santa Ana River is the largest river entirely within Southern California in the United States. It rises in the San Bernardino Mountains and flows for most of its length through San Bernardino and Riverside counties, before cutting through the northern Santa Ana Mountains via Santa Ana Canyon and flowing southwest through urban Orange County to drain into the Pacific Ocean. The Santa Ana River is 96 miles (154 km) long, and its drainage basin is 2,650 square miles (6,900 km2) in size.
The San Gabriel River is a mostly urban waterway flowing 58 miles (93 km) southward through Los Angeles and Orange Counties, California in the United States. It is the central of three major rivers draining the Greater Los Angeles Area, the others being the Los Angeles River and Santa Ana River. The river's watershed stretches from the rugged San Gabriel Mountains to the heavily developed San Gabriel Valley and a significant part of the Los Angeles coastal plain, emptying into the Pacific Ocean between the cities of Long Beach and Seal Beach.
Ballona Creek is an 8.5-mile (13.7 km) channelized stream in southwestern Los Angeles County, California, United States, that was once a "year-round river lined with sycamores and willows" with the Tongva village of Guashna located at the mouth of the creek. Ballona Creek and neighboring Ballona Wetlands remain a prime bird-watching spot for waterfowl, shorebirds, warblers, and birds of prey.
Hansen Dam is a flood control dam in the northeastern San Fernando Valley, in the Lake View Terrace neighborhood of Los Angeles, California. The dam was built by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, Los Angeles District in 1940. Hansen Dam was named after horse ranchers Homer and Marie Hansen, who established a ranch in the 19th century.
Codornices Creek, 2.0 miles (3.2 km) long, is one of the principal creeks which runs out of the Berkeley Hills in the East Bay area of the San Francisco Bay Area in California. In its upper stretch, it passes entirely within the city limits of Berkeley, and marks the city limit with the adjacent city of Albany in its lower section. Before European settlement, Codornices probably had no direct, permanent connection to San Francisco Bay. Like many other small creeks, it filtered through what early maps show as grassland to a large, northward-running salt marsh and slough that also carried waters from Marin Creek and Schoolhouse Creek. A channel was cut through in the 19th Century, and Codornices flows directly to San Francisco Bay by way of a narrow remnant slough adjacent to Golden Gate Fields racetrack.
The Ventura River, in western Ventura County in southern California, United States, flows 16.2 miles (26.1 km) from its headwaters to the Pacific Ocean. The smallest of the three major rivers in Ventura County, it flows through the steeply sloped, narrow Ventura Valley, with its final 0.7 miles (1.1 km) through the broader Ventura River estuary, which extends from where it crosses under a 101 Freeway bridge through to the Pacific Ocean.
Colma Creek is a small creek that flows to the San Francisco Bay from its source in the Crocker Hills portion of San Bruno Mountain State and County Park, north of San Mateo County's Guadalupe Canyon Parkway, with contribution from April Brook on San Bruno Mountain proper, south of the Parkway. It flows southwest and makes a 90 degree bend in Daly City to flow southeastward, through Daly City, Colma, and South San Francisco to the bay. Its small delta is between South San Francisco and the San Francisco International Airport.
The Russian River is a southward-flowing river that drains 1,485 sq mi (3,850 km2) of Sonoma and Mendocino counties in Northern California. With an annual average discharge of approximately 1,600,000 acre feet (2.0 km3), it is the second-largest river flowing through the nine-county Greater San Francisco Bay Area, with a mainstem 115 mi (185 km) long.
The Los Gatos Creek runs 24 miles (39 km) in California through Santa Clara Valley Water District's Guadalupe Watershed from the Santa Cruz Mountains northward through the Santa Clara Valley until its confluence with the Guadalupe River in downtown San Jose. The Guadalupe River then continues onward into San Francisco Bay.
Sausal Creek, 3.1 miles (5.0 km) long, is one of the principal creeks in Oakland, California.
Cerrito Creek is one of the principal watercourses running out of the Berkeley Hills into San Francisco Bay in northern California. It is significant for its use as a boundary demarcation historically, as well as presently. In the early 19th century, it separated the vast Rancho San Antonio to the south from the Castro family's Rancho San Pablo to the north. Today, it marks part of the boundary between Alameda County and Contra Costa County. The main stem, running through a deep canyon that separates Berkeley from Kensington, is joined below San Pablo Avenue by a fan of tributaries, their lower reaches mostly in culverts. The largest of these is Middle or Blackberry Creek, a southern branch.
Pinole Creek is a stream in western Contra Costa County, in the East Bay region of the San Francisco Bay Area, California.
Islais Creek or Islais Creek Channel is a small creek in San Francisco, California. The name of the creek is derived from a Salinan Native American word "slay" or "islay", the name for the Prunus ilicifolia wild cherries. Around the time of the Gold Rush, the area became an industrial hub, and the condition of the creek worsened. After the devastating 1906 San Francisco earthquake, the city decided to reclaim the creek using earthquake debris, reducing the waterbody to its present size. Though much of Islais Creek has been converted to an underground culvert, remnants still exist today at both Glen Canyon Park and Third Street. Several community organizations are dedicated to preserve these remnants, as they are important wildlife habitats.
San Diego Creek is a 16-mile (26 km) urban waterway flowing into Upper Newport Bay in Orange County, California in the United States. Its watershed covers 112.2 square miles (291 km2) in parts of eight cities, including Irvine, Tustin, and Costa Mesa. From its headwaters in Laguna Woods the creek flows northwest to its confluence with Peters Canyon Wash, where it turns abruptly southwest towards the bay. Most of the creek has been converted to a concrete flood control channel, but it also provides important aquatic and riparian habitat along its course and its tidal estuary.
Los Angeles County Flood Control District v. Natural Resources Defense Council, Inc., 568 U.S. 78 (2013), is a United States Supreme Court case in which the Natural Resources Defense Council and Santa Monica Baykeeper challenged the Los Angeles County Flood Control District (District) for violating the terms of its National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System (NPDES) permit as shown in water quality measurements from monitoring stations within the Los Angeles and San Gabriel Rivers. The Supreme Court, by a unanimous 9-0 vote, reversed and remanded the Ninth Circuit's ruling on the grounds that the flow of water from an improved portion of a navigable waterway into an unimproved portion of the same waterway does not qualify as a "discharge of a pollutant" under the Clean Water Act.
The Laguna Creek watershed consists of 25.1 square miles (100 km2) of land within northern California's Alameda County. The watershed drains the foothills of the Diablo Range south of Niles Canyon. To the southeast, the area of Mission Peak Regional Preserve around Mission Peak is included. Agua Caliente, Canada del Aliso, Mission, Morrison, Sabercat, Vargas, and Washington creeks drain the area of the watershed. They drain into Laguna Creek and eventually Mud Slough.
