Ojai Valley and the January 2005 Flood

Created 21 January 2006

This page last updated 5 January 2008

Like many areas with seasonal rains, the Ojai Valley has experienced serious flooding over the years. However, the flood of 8-9 January 2005 was especially impressive, primarily for the record rainfall and the flood levels and resulting damage to property along the natural drainages.

The flooding along San Antonio Creek has been determined in January 2005 to be what is called a 50-year storm. That is, there is a probability of such a storm and flood occurring once every 50 years, but that does not mean that it will only happen once every 50 years. The 1998 flood event here was only a 25-year flood event, and that flood caused lots of damage to roads and property, like the January 2005 flooding.

This webpage provides some photographs of what many of the streams, and Ventura River, looked like during the flooding, and before and after in some places.

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All photos copyrighted by David L. Magney 2005-2006

Links to other Ojai websites

NOAA Weather website for January 2005 storms
Ventura County Watershed Protection District's website illustrating rainstorm data

Links to other Ojai Valley 2005 Flooding Pages

Ojai Flooding of 2005 Page 2
Ojai Flooding of 2005 Page 3

Photos and Video Clips of Flood Scenes in and around Ojai

Oblique aerial photos I took of the upper part of the Ventura River and western Ojai Valley on 14 January 2005. These were taken just under five days after the major flooding event of the season. Lake Casitas is prominantly visible in the upper center of each photo. The Ventura River still has high flows, but less than half the flows that occurred a couple of weeks previously. Water can be seen in multiple channels, or a braided pattern when normally this reach of the river has only one active, flowing channel, or is dry.

The river as it flows past Oak View is a silver ribbon, joined by San Antonio Creek appearing from the lower left corner of the left photo. The right photo shows the Ventura River at the State Route 150/Baldwin Road bridge, with Rancho Matilija in the upper right and the old Sheriff's Honor Farm on the lower left.

The left photo shows a nearly vertical aerial shot of the lower San Antonio Creek with the Old Creek Winery property at the bottom. The right photo shows the mouth of the Ventura River at Ventura. The silt-laden river waters extend a plume of muddy water hundreds of yards into the Pacific Ocean.

Ojai Creek, a small creek draining the central northern part of the Ojai, including upper Signal Street and points south and west. Ojai Creek is channelized for most of its lenght, and flows directly under the Arcade in downtown, daylighting at Cherub's and flows through Libbey Park, past the tennis courts, and joints Fox Canyon Barranca Creek at lower Montgomery Street. The chocolate color of the water indicates that the water is working by picking up silt and clay, and transporting them downstream.

Arbolada Creek, a small creek draining the central and southeastern part of the Arbolada. Here is passes through Bill Fox's place at the corner of El Paseo and Bristol, and on the north side of El Paseo, it flows over a fairly new lawn that was once creek bottom.

Seeing Stewart Canyon Debris Basin full of water is a very rare sight indeed. This debris basin was built in the mid-1980s to capture debris flows following erosion after wildfires, but it also has permanently blocked any passage by Steelhead Trout that once used Stewart Canyon Creek on Nordhoff Ridge. The creek below the dam is entirely channelized, and underground for at least half a mile (under Canada Street and Carrow's Restaurant) before opening daylighting again. The lower reach of the creek is natural, and provides good aquatic habitat.

Fox Canyon Barranca drains the northeastern portion of the City of Ojai centering on North Montomery Street, and is either underground or channelized as below for most of its length through the city. Below is the channelized portion on the south side of Ojai Avenue (next to Fresh Grill) at flood stage. Notice the standing waves outlining how the creek wants to meander back and forth. The creek is not channelized when it reaches South Montgomery Street on the south side of the city, as seen here just downstream of its confluence with Ojai Creek. The Ventura Street/Creek Road bridge over Fox Canyon Barranca is shown in the lower right photo at high flows.

Here Fox Canyon Barranca joins Stewart Canyon Creek, at flood stage. The video clip on the right lacks sound, so you will have imagine the load roar of the water and the occassional pounding of boulders being picked up and bounced into each other. The hydraulic lift of the water flowing over the top of the boulder faster than under it actually will lift very heavy boulders off the creek bed and allow them to be washed downstream. This process is called "saltation". It is the combination of hydraulics doing the heavy lifting and the weaker force of the moving water that then pushes those big boulders downstream that causes all the damage to property that gets in the way.

Meanwhile, Reeves Creek and Thacher Creek have joined forces and Thacher Creek jumps its banks and floods onto State Route 150 between Carne Road and the SR150 bridge over Thacher Creek (the road is shut down just after this photo was taken.

On 12 January 2005, I revisited San Antonio Creek at the SR150 bridge, just west of Boardman Road. The creek is much wider now, with the left bank widened laterally about 25 feet. Water levels are significantly lower, compared to what it was during the flood just three days previous, as seen to the lower left.

This is San Antonio Creek, looking upstream, as it was on 12 January 2005, just a few days later. The photo on the left is taken from SR150 while the photo on the right is taken from the Grand Avenue bridge.

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