Autumn’s first storm blows erratically across Modesto area. What’s ahead for weekend?

One of the oddest storms in years flooded a few places in the Modesto area while barely wetting others.

Two motorists escaped injury when they were stranded in flood water on Beckwith Road on Wednesday evening, the Salida Fire Protection District reported. Around the same time, the Ripon Police Department was getting requests for sandbags from numerous residents, who were directed to hardware stores.

A mere 0.04 inches of rain collected in the Modesto Irrigation District’s downtown gauge Wednesday. The city got a little more Thursday afternoon.

The storm was the first one of autumn, following the long, dry summer that is typical of California. It was fairly warm, bringing mostly rain rather than snow to the Sierra Nevada, and a lot of it in places. The Highway 140 entrance to Yosemite National Park closed for a while because of expected downpours. It and other park roads were clear as of Thursday afternoon.

Modesto police reported no problems from the evening’s storm. There weren’t even as many traffic collisions as normal for a first rain, Lt. Martha Delgado said.

Where Beckwith dips between North Hart and Jackson Roads, the water was between 24 and 30 inches deep during the downpour, SFPD engineer Mike Lunn said.

“One vehicle had gone through and stalled and got stranded,” he said, “and the other spun out and went into a ditch and was floating there.”

The Weather Service forecast a 20 percent chance of Modesto rain on Thursday evening, followed by dry, sunny conditions for at least the next seven days. This coming weekend looks to be breezy, with gusts up to 25 miles per hour.