Damaging winds, excessive rainfall and extremely heavy snow walloped California and southern Oregon yesterday as a series of winter storms ripped across the western US coast, prompting California Governor Gavin Newsom to declare an emergency.
The latest incoming system is expected to deliver another 3cm to 16cm of rain to already-saturated California, where the National Weather Service (NWS) is warning of coastal flash flooding and mudslides in wildfire-scarred terrain.
“Residents and visitors are urged to check their local forecast before traveling, and prepare for potential power outages and/or flooding impacts,” the NWS said.
Photo: AFP
Another drenching is expected in northern California by tonight, leading to additional flooding concerns, the forecaster added.
The Pacific storm intensified so rapidly it has become what meteorologists call a bomb cyclone, bringing hurricane-strength winds that are driving a deep ribbon of moisture off the ocean into California.
A similar band of torrential rains, known as an atmospheric river, swept ashore last week. A subsequent stream is forecast to hit this weekend, followed by another early next week, adding to the trouble.
Mandatory evacuation orders have been issued in the most populous US state.
Newsom declared a statewide emergency on Wednesday, while local authorities have issued ominous warnings of threats to life and property for a vast stretch of California, focused around San Francisco and Sacramento.
Bars and restaurants were shuttered in San Francisco as the city girded for Wednesday’s storm, with local media showing flooded roads, and reports of long delays on public transportation.
Dozens of flights were canceled, some schools pre-emptively closed and about 190,000 customers across the state were without power as of early yesterday morning, according to the PowerOutage.us Web site.
Thousands of sandbags were distributed to residents fearful of flooding.
“We’re very worried about it,” Deepak Srivastava told CBS Television in San Francisco.
“[I] just spent all day putting sandbags in front of the garage at every entering point, and we’re just crossing our fingers and hoping we won’t have more damage.”
City officials said they were working around the clock.
“We’ve been working very hard to source sandbags from wherever we can in northern California,” said Rachel Gordon of the city’s public works department.
“If you don’t have to be out in San Francisco, please don’t be out on the roads,” she said.
The storms come after near-record rainfall was deposited over recent weeks.
On New Year’s Eve, parts of northern California were lashed by a storm that caused landslides and power outages, as levees were breached and roadways were flooded.
At least one person is known to have died after being trapped in a submerged car.
San Francisco recorded almost 14cm of rain on Sunday, the city’s second-wettest day in recorded history.
The waterlogging caused by those previous storms would exacerbate the danger of this one, meteorologist Matt Solum said.
“This storm alone without the previous storms would cause localized flooding concerns and rock slides and mudslide concerns,” he said. “But with the recent wet conditions, a lot of the rainfall that’s already fallen has already saturated the ground so any additional rainfall is going to run off instead of soak into the ground.”
While it is difficult to draw a straight line to this storm from human-caused climate change, scientists have said that a warmer planet brings more unstable weather, with more ferocious storms as well as longer, hotter dry periods.
The western US is in the grip of a decades-long drought, with below-average precipitation leaving river and reservoir levels worryingly low.
Solum said that any rain is helpful in alleviating the drought, but back-to-back storms could be destructive because there was nowhere for the water to go.
“It’s just the compounding impact of all the storms is what’s going to be the most impactful,” he said.
More storms are to come.
“It’s definitely going to continue,” he said.
A subsequent atmospheric river is forecast to hit this weekend, followed by another early next week.
“These little breaks will be few and far between. There is not going to be much recovery time between these atmospheric rivers,” said Andrew Orrison, a forecaster at the US Weather Prediction Center.
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