Business is downtown Napa returns after atmospheric river brought heavy rain

NAPA – It was a pretty busy Saturday night in downtown Napa, almost as if you’d never know the atmospheric river passed through just the day before.

“It was crazy. We ended up stopping and buying umbrellas because we didn’t have anything. We did bring coats because we knew it was cold but we didn’t have anything for the rain,” Elizabeth Villarreal, who was visiting from Dallas, told CBS News Bay Area.

Villarreal and her husband are celebrating their eight-year wedding anniversary and decided to vacation in California this year. It was quite the trek though, as they did encounter some travel delays on the way.

“We were supposed to get here at 9 a.m. and we ended up having a four-hour delay from Dallas, Texas because it rained so much in San Francisco, so all the planes got backed up,” Villarreal said.

But she said everything is OK now, as she and her family were enjoying a nice drink at The ArBARetum Napa Valley.

“No one was out. The whole town was a ghost which was funny to see. We did get a bit of business after once the rain started slowing,” Hanzel Dingler, the general manager of The ArBARetum Napa Valley, told CBS News Bay Area. “A bar that we have half of our seating outside, we had to enclose everything. It was busy but not as busy as it usually is.”

“It was just cold, rainy like you could tell nobody wanted to go outside,” Allison Pattillo, who works at Miyamo down the street, said. “My mom was working at Mustards at the time, so all the powers out, there wasn’t music or anything. Customers were coming in, all the orders on the receipts and stuff weren’t working so electricity was all gone.”

But at least in the downtown area, businesses, neighbors and visitors are grateful they did not sustain any major damages from the weather.

“Everything came back like normal. The sun came out and everyone started coming out. And of course, being a bar it’s the perfect place to be. You have a drink you, forget about yesterday,” Dingler said.