The first of three expected weekend storms blew through West Marin Friday, causing flooding, toppling trees, and closing roads.

Matt Gallagher of Point Reyes Station (using a shovel for a paddle) and Tony Smith check on Jim and Kathy Love’s levee road home. The Loves years ago raised their home on high stilts, so the living area stays dry regardless of what nearby Papermill and Olema creeks do.

Friday’s wind speed was at least as high as an East Coast hurricane.

On the Beaufort Scale used by mariners, winds reach hurricane force at 74 mph. The National Weather Service considers winds to have reached hurricane force at 80 mph. At 8:33 a.m. Friday, a National Weather Service monitoring station on Big Rock Ridge just east of Nicasio clocked the wind holding steady at 83 mph.

Exactly 23 minutes later, county firefighters received a call that a 50-foot-high tree had been blown onto a house at 25 Drakes Summit Rd. in Inverness Park. Although there was “major damage” to the home, no one was injured, Fire Capt. Joe Morena told me. He added that the house was sturdily built.

The backstop, infield, and outfield were flooded by Olema Creek Friday at Love Field next to the home of Jim and Kathy Love.

At least four inches of rain fell in much of Marin County, swelling West Marin Creeks, which flooded roadways. Around noon, Highway 1 was flooded between Point Reyes Station and Olema and between Bolinas and Stinson Beach. Papermill/Lagunitas Creek flooded Platform Bridge Road and (briefly) the Point Reyes Petaluma Road just east of Highway 1.

Calle Arroyo in Stinson Beach flooded, and Panoramic Highway leading over Mount Tamalpais from town was closed by fallen trees near Mountain Home Inn. Fallen trees also closed Sir Francis Drake Boulevard in Samuel P. Taylor State Park.

Gary Cheda, owner of Cheda’s Garage in Point Reyes Station, told me his towtrucks pulled two cars and a van off flooded Highway 1 just south of town.

Gary said motorists increase their chance of stalling if they don’t proceed slowly on flooded pavement. Driving faster kicks up water into the engine compartment. When water gets into the cylinders, it can’t be compressed and piston rods are bent, he explained.

Although the creeks are not saltwater, Gary noted, they nonetheless are brown with “grit,” which also is bad for car engines. Grit can into engine rings and seals where it sometimes causes expensive problems, he said.

In addition to flooding, fallen trees and limbs that blocked roads made driving difficult throughout West Marin Friday. The fire captain told me county firefighters from the Point Reyes Station firehouse spent much of Friday clearing away downed trees.

After this cypress tree blew down across Highway 1 on the north side of Point Reyes Station Friday morning, county firefighters partly reopened the road, but the northbound lane remained blocked all afternoon while firefighters and Caltrans dealt with crises elsewhere.

Broken limbs also brought down powerlines, and parts of Nicasio were without power for a day and a half. Olema and parts of Inverness experienced shorter blackouts. Overall, relatively few West Marin residents experienced more than momentary blackouts compared with residents of East Marin (especially Sausalito, Mill Valley, and Fairfax).

Nonetheless, downed powerlines can be shocking, and this one at Cypress and Overlook roads in Point Reyes Station sparked a (very small) fire notwithstanding the rain.

Art and Laura Rogers of Mesa Road in Point Reyes Station found their road flooded by Tomasini Creek at noon Friday and had to take another route downtown.

Not only did downed lines, fallen trees, and flooding make it difficult for motorists to leave West Marin, Sheriff’s. Lt. Doug Pittman issued a plea over KWMR for West Marin residents to stay at home. Over the hill, traffic was in “gridlock,” he said.

The problem again was high wind. Shortly before 11 a.m. Friday, it blew over five semi trucks traveling in both directions on the Richmond-San Rafael Bridge, leading to bridge closures off and on all afternoon. But that was not the worst of it.

Within an hour of overturning big rigs on the Richmond-San Rafael Bridge, the wind blew construction plywood and planks onto Highway 101 in San Rafael. Clearing away the construction material, which came from the new Highway 580 overpass, and making sure no more would blow down halted Highway 101 traffic for most of Friday afternoon.

At various times, vehicles were backed up 10 to 20miles in both directions on the freeway, and thousands of motorists detoured onto surface streets in East Marin.

Bad as the weather was in West Marin, most residents had reason to be prepared; the county fire department Thursday afternoon called virtually every household here with a recorded message that warned about the severity of the stormy weather to come.

It is possible to say too little and end up implying too much. Such is the case with this Marin County Environmental Health Department sign at the Green Bridge over Papermill Creek.

In all likelihood, most visitors to Point Reyes Station (as well as many townspeople) would read this sign to mean Papermill Creek is polluted. Moreover, the sign seems to suggest a person can be harmed by merely dipping his toe in the water.

Equally worrisome, Point Reyes Station’s water system is supplied by creekside wells not far upstream from the sign. The water system is, of course, operated by North Marin Water District, so I called NMWD senior chemist Stacie Goodpaster and asked if the town has a problem. Stacie was surprised to learn of the sign.

North Marin’s wells are set back from Papermill Creek and fed by creek water that is drawn through the sand-and-gravel subsoil. Monthly tests at the wells and the water system’s treatment plant haven’t found bacteria in the drinking water, Stacie said.

North Marin’s tests of Papermill Creek’s water have found only normal amounts of bacteria, including e-coli bacteria, she added. After a rain, of course, the amount of bacteria in the creek goes up temporarily, Stacie noted, because bacteria get washed into the creek.

However, she added, North Marin’s current testing cannot determine the source of the bacteria; they come from soil, decaying plants, or animal waste. She felt reasonably sure there has not been any sewage leak into the creek, for that would cause there to be at least 50 times as much e-coli in the water.

My next call was to David Smail, supervising health inspector for the Marin County Environmental Health Department. David’s first response was that the warning sign is overdue to come down. The county monitors the creek weekly from April through October, and the warning was supposed to come down soon after the Oct. 31 testing. David said he’d have the sign taken down right away.

The rest of the situation, however, is more complicated. For example, the State of California sets different standards for freshwater and saltwater recreation. The standards also differentiate between swimming, surfing, and other aquatic activities in which a person might swallow water (Recreation 1) and aquatic activities such as boating in which a person is unlikely to drink the water (Recreation 2).

David told me the warning signs go up when Recreation 1 standards are exceeded, even if the water may be safe for boating and other Recreation 2 uses.

Unlike North Marin, which monitors water quality by testing for total bacteria and for e-coli bacteria, Marin Environmental Health tests for enterococcus bacteria. However, neither agency’s tests indicate whether there are any pathogens in the water. In fact, with the occasional exception of one strain of e-coli, most bacteria found in West Marin water are not themselves dangerous.

Current water-quality tests determine only whether there are bacteria in the creek that MAY have passed through the gut of an animal or human. If either were sick, its waste MIGHT contain pathogens. Adding to the uncertainty, as Stacie at North Marin noted, such bacteria can also come from soil and decaying plants.

David at Environmental Health told me that under state standards for Recreation 1 freshwater, the maximum number of enterococcus bacteria per milliliter is 61 in a single day’s sample (104 for saltwater). The last sampling at the Green Bridge resulted in an enterococcus count of 63 (only two over the limit), but under established “protocol,” that requires a sign, David said.

In fact, according to people living along the creek, the sign has been up for months.

Like Stacie at North Marin, David at Environmental Health and Environmental Health chief Phil Smith both stressed to me that the amount of bacteria in the creek goes up when it rains. As it happened, rainfall throughout California averaged 125 percent of normal in October, and Marin led the way with almost 4 inches falling at Blackpoint in Novato. After all that rain, however, the enterococcus count in Papermill Creek was only two points over the Recreation 1 limit, suggesting its normal water quality is quite healthy.

Is all this an academic discussion? Not really.

Linda Petersen of Point Reyes Station with her dog Sebastian at White House Pool on Papermill/Lagunitas Creek.

As you could read in a posting from last October, Rod Ruiz, supervising ranger of Marin Parks, has been doing a good job of administering White House Pool. That great, little park was laid out to provide a number of overlooks along Papermill Creek for enjoying West Marin scenery, but a walker’s enjoyment of the view is inevitably diminished when she reads the creek is so polluted she should stay well away from it.

Because current tests may primarily count naturally occurring bacteria originating with plants and animals in Samuel P. Taylor State Park, the GGNRA etc., a sign that fails to acknowledge this possibility unfairly denigrates West Marin, making its scenic countryside sound troubled in ways it may not be.

Phil, the Environmental Health chief, in fact acknowledged that in recent years, Tomales Bay and creeks flowing into it have (along with “Muir Beach North”) received bad publicity that “erroneously” portrayed them as having poor water quality.

His department is now planning an $840,000 Beach Water Quality Testing Project to be financed with state money. The project will allow Environmental Health to determine if specific bacteria (such as a toxic strain of e-coli called O157H) are present in West Marin waters.

In its initial stage, however, the project still won’t identify the source of bacteria in the creek, plant, human, or animal, and if animal, what kind. In short, if something somewhere is contaminating the creek, the county still won’t know what or where. And if most of the bacteria in the creek are naturally occurring, the county won’t necessarily know that either.

However, Dr. Corey Goodman of Marshall, a National Science Foundation fellow, has offered the county $200,000 to refine its analysis of Tomales Bay water, Phil noted. If this leads to a second phase of the Beach Water Quality Testing Project, he added, the county might finally be able to track the sources of bacteria in Papermill and nearby creeks.

Until then, however, the tourists who read the county’s warning signs are likely to return from West Marin talking about how polluted our waterways are while residents here will sometimes wonder whether it’s safe to even paddle a canoe in Papermill Creek.