“An atmospheric river could have made this a lot worse,” Garcia said.
Still, the scale of the flooding alarmed North Bay Rep. Jared Huffman, who toured some of the county’s flooded areas on Monday.
“In almost every direction in a place like Marin County, you’ve got vulnerability,” he said. “I hope we don’t have to see catastrophic damage to have a greater commitment to resiliency.”
Water seeped around numerous retail and residential areas in low-lying parts of Marin County, including the Larkspur Marina neighborhood, which sits along the Corte Madera Creek.
“The streets looked like a lagoon,” Larkspur Mayor Stephanie Andre said.
Water pooling on major thoroughfares also caused major delays along Highway 101 over the weekend, after about 2.5 feet of water quickly rose along the route, Thomas said. Exits had to be shut down for multiple hours because of standing water.
As rain continued on Monday, the highway’s northbound off-ramp to Highway 1, which leads to Sausalito, was again closed due to flooding.
Thomas said when rain, king tides and storm surge all combine, the impacts don’t just harm those bayfront properties, but “tie up the entire town.”
People wade through an RV park flooded by the “King Tides” on Saturday, Jan. 3, 2026, near Corte Madera in Marin County, California. (Ethan Swope/AP Photo)
“That is a call for us to be united in tackling this,” Thomas said. “It’s a county problem, and we have to approach it that way. And we all have to participate in the solutions together.”
The state has tasked every county and city around the lip of San Francisco Bay and the coast to come up with a sea level rise plan by 2034. The solutions should ideally deal with today’s flooding and the high water of the future.
Thomas said Corte Madera has a climate action plan to address related issues, like increased flood risk, and is looking at creating physical barriers that can help reroute water. In 2023, the city held a listening tour to develop a community vision for adaptation to a future with rising sea levels.
In Larkspur, city officials attempted to get extra pumps into residential areas to drain flood water, but Andre said that pumping isn’t effective during elevated tides. She said that the city is hoping to work with Huffman to secure funding to strengthen some of its coastal retaining walls, especially as Marin continues to deal with sea level rise.
One neighborhood had applied for $18 million in federal grant funding to build a new sheet pile wall meant to keep water out. County supervisor Mary Sackett said the current 40-year-old berm wouldn’t be able to stop any overtopping of floodwater, threatening homes and the entire road system around Vendola Drive in Santa Venetia, a community in eastern Marin. Like many federal grant programs, issuance of that money has been paused for months under President Donald Trump.
Even if it did become available, though, it won’t be enough to cover the full cost of the project, and, Huffman said, it “is not sustainable in the long term, especially with these tides and all of the volatility with our weather.”
“We’re not going to give up on funding that longer-term solution,” he said.
What those more lasting solutions might look like, local leaders don’t really know. Sackett said the focus is often too local on how to prevent disaster in one city or neighborhood. She said the more pertinent question that needs answering is: “How do we make this entire area more resilient?”
