Heavy Rains lead to Flooding along the American River Trail

I left my apartment this morning on my usual commute ride.  Down F Street, onto Sixteenth, under the UPRR tracks, back behind the warehouses on North B and onto the bike trail feeder behind the Blue Diamond Almond Plant.  The trail follows the old Sacramento-Chico Traction Commuter rail tracks across the bridge over the American River.  It then drops down into the floodplain... where I found a lake. 

The bike trail disappeared from view and was submerged as far as I could see.  "Damn," I thought, "and I was thinking I'd be to work a little early." 

So I backtracked into town and wound my way on surface streets back to H Street and then the Fair Oaks Bridge.  From there, I got on the bike trail heading the other direction, bound for my usual connection with surface streets at Northrop Ave. 

At some point, as I was riding along the levee, a county park ranger stopped me to warn me that I wouldn't be able to get to downtown due to flooding.  "I figured that out the hard way," I told him, and thanked him for stopping me.  A guy can't be everywhere at once, right?

Nevertheless, I'm trying to find a resource to tell me before I leave for work in the morning if my normal commute route is flooded and impassable or not.  It took me an extra ten minutes to ride out to the lake and then backtrack this morning.

My current plan is to ride H Street, tomorrow, and just check the conditions when I get a chance later this week.  Maybe I'll keep riding H until the Bureau of Reclamation ramps down their Nimbus Dam release (upstream of Sacramento) to less than 30,000 cubic feet per second!  If anyone else has a resource that you use, shoot me a link! 

Safe travels!