Longtime Palo Alto resident Charles Junkerman, associate provost and dean at Stanford University, knows what it's like for his home to be flooded. In February 1998, waters overflowing from the San Francisquito Creek damaged his basement, garage, garden room and a car in the driveway, as well as his furnace, water heater, washer and dryer.

"It was pretty awful," he said. "It took weeks and weeks to clean up."

Junkerman said the trauma, and financial losses, from the '98 flood prompted him to sandbag his Chaucer Street house every winter for the next 10 years — until several years of drought conditions led him to stop sandbagging.

So Junkerman, like many of his neighbors, was caught by surprise when the city called on New Year's Eve to tell him and his wife that the creek was again overflowing.

The Junkermans moved their cars to higher ground and then blocked doorways with water-absorbent emergency bags they had on hand. Water flooded their driveway, front yard, backyard, garage and garden room, even more quickly than in the '98 flood.

"It was so fast," Junkerman said. "It was just kind of astonishing."

Junkerman and his wife did not have to evacuate on New Year's Eve, but they are still feeling the storm's impact: Their furniture and carpet in the garden room will need to be replaced, he said.

Thankfully, the Junkermans' home did not flood again in the subsequent storms, although he did notice water coming up through the storm drains and out onto the street on Jan. 4.

Farther from the creek, a family living on Louisa Court weren't so lucky.

On New Year's Eve, they were eating breakfast at home when the wife received an alert from her Ring Doorbell security system that the nearby San Francisquito Creek was overflowing.

"We didn't even realize we were near a creek, or that there was the threat of a flood," said the woman, who requested to remain anonymous to protect her privacy. This was the first big storm they had experienced since moving into the home almost two years ago, she said.

When the family went to the window, they saw water from the creek rushing across Newell Road and toward their house on Louisa Court. Less than 30 minutes later, every room in the house was flooded with muddy water.

When the family called 911, an operator told them to leave the house.

By that time, the water level had reached up to the windows of their cars, so the family grabbed rugs, toys and other items they could carry before wading through knee-deep water to the end of the court to meet an Uber driver who took them to a hotel.

The trek down the court toward Newell Road was short but difficult, the wife said. She tripped and fell into the cold water while carrying her 4-year-old tightly in her arms.

She said Newell was filled with water but not flooded. As she approached the road, she saw someone riding a bike and people in cars taking video of the damage as they drove past her court.

"That was the weird thing about it ... that you could be so close to our house and yet (the water) be so deep in our cul-de-sac," she said.

Their home was one of two on Louisa Court that were completely flooded, according to the city of Palo Alto, and one of 13 the city received storm and flood damage reports about following the windy and wet weather systems that struck on New Year's Eve and continued into the first week of January.

Palo Alto did not issue any evacuation orders during the recent storms, Chief Communications Officer Meghan Horrigan-Taylor said in an email. Some residents in flood zones, however, did receive calls from the city warning them of potential flooding. Residents citywide received two emergency alerts on Dec. 31, and those in the Crescent Park and Duveneck/St. Francis neighborhoods and parts of Community Center and Downtown North received a flood alert, she said. Thousands of residents also received alerts from emergencymanagement.sccgov.org/ Alert SCC, Santa Clara County's emergency notification system.

The Louisa Court resident said she never received an emergency alert from the city or county. As far as she's aware, the city did not close her court to traffic or send emergency personnel to the scene on New Year's Eve.

"The floodwater was deep enough where my children could have drowned in it, and I was just surprised that there was no response," she said. "It was kind of a bizarre feeling."

The family spent New Year's Day removing waterlogged belongings from their home and the next few days sandbagging the house after hearing about the possibility of even-worse flooding from inclement weather expected to hit later that week on Jan. 4. In the days leading up to the next storm, city workers cleared mud off of drains and the street on Louisa Court, she said.

The family ended up having to stay in a hotel in Palo Alto for eight days until the storms passed. Fortunately, their home did not flood again in the subsequential storms, and the city reimbursed them for three nights of their stay, she said.

Since that major flood in 1998, the San Francisquito Creek Joint Powers Authority has taken steps to improve flood control along the creek. Part of the overall plan calls for replacing the Newell Street Bridge, which connects Palo Alto and East Palo Alto, in 2024 and the Pope-Chaucer Bridge, which connects Palo Alto to Menlo Park, in 2025.

Junkerman said he believes it is unfair to expect Palo Alto residents to be responsible for protecting their homes from flooding when it has taken so long for the city to replace the Pope-Chaucer Bridge. He said it should have been replaced within a few years following the '98 flood.

For the Louisa Court family, January's storms have made them rethink whether they want to remain living near the creek.

Although they love the neighborhood and the Palo Alto community, the wife said she never wants to move into a floodplain again.

Staying in the area would come with severe anxiety every winter, she explained.

"I'm horrified of another flood," she said. "It's an experience I would really not ever want to go through again."

Even though the rain has subsided, the city recommends that residents keep sandbags on hand until the rainy season is over, Horrigan-Taylor said in an email. To stay up-to-date with relevant information, she also encouraged residents to sign up for Alert SCC by going to emergencymanagement.sccgov.org/AlertSCC, to follow the police department on the Nixle notification app by texting your ZIP code to 888777 and follow the city's Twitter account at @cityofpaloalto.