Low-Water Crossing Web Cameras

Do not drive through flooded roads.

 

In floodwaters, you can lose control of your vehicle, your car may stall or lose power, hidden hazards can damage your vehicle, and water can rise quickly and trap you.

 

If you find a flooded road, stay calm, turn around, and take another route.

Overview of Low-Water Crossing Web Camera Network

The San Diego County Flood Control District maintains four webcams at selected low water crossings throughout the county. The image position of the webcam may change from time to time as the cameras can be controlled by County emergency staff as they inspect the condition of the road during flooding, and look up and downstream to inspect the general condition of the stream.

The webcams transmit their data by Verizon wireless modems. Occasionally, voice traffic over the nearby cell towers increases, and Verizon temporarily blocks access to our webcams until the voice traffic decreases, usually for just a few minutes. If you try to access the webcam while it is offline, an alternative site can be accessed at https://sandiego.onerain.com. The co-located flood warning station is listed next to the webcam link below. Select Sites in the upper left corner of the home page, scroll down to the station you are interested in, select the station, select Stream Level, then click on the graph. The orange line on the graph represents the road surface, and the red line represents a road-closed condition.

 

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Quarry Road Flooding on December 14, 2021

On December 14, 2021, the San Diego region saw the strongest storm of the 2021–2022 winter. It was driven by an atmospheric river, which is a long, narrow band of very moist air over the Pacific that can bring hours of steady, sometimes heavy rain when it moves over land.

What happened

  • Widespread rain: Many communities west of the Peninsular Ranges (the main mountain chain running north–south through San Diego County) received 1 to 2 inches of rain during the day.
  • Heaviest period: The most intense rain fell in the late morning and early afternoon.
  • Why it got so heavy: As a cold front (a boundary where colder air pushes into warmer air) moved through, it created cold‑frontal rainbands, which are thin, fast‑moving lines of heavy rain.
    These bands produced 0.5 to 0.75 inches per hour, which is very heavy rain that can quickly overwhelm storm drains and lead to street flooding, especially in low‑lying or poor‑drainage areas.
  • Impacts: The intense rainfall caused localized flooding, flooding in specific spots such as certain streets, intersections, and low areas, rather than across the entire region.

 

The image loop below from the Quarry Road Webcam shows flooding on Quarry Road caused by this heavy rain.

Quarry Road Flooding 12/14/21