California faces more drenching rain as a historic drought has given way to flooding that’s killed at least 17 people, closed highways and sent residents fleeing for their lives.
(Bloomberg) — California faces more drenching rain as a historic drought has given way to flooding that’s killed at least 17 people, closed highways and sent residents fleeing for their lives.
Three more storms are lined up to hit the Golden State through the weekend, threatening to push swollen rivers over their banks and trigger more mudslides and power outages, state officials said. Flooding concerns will continue late Wednesday morning into Thursday, National Weather Service Sacramento said on Twitter.
“It’s really rare to get this series of storms,” Michael Anderson, state climatologist for the Department of Water Resources, said at a media briefing Tuesday. Officials are now concerned about the “cumulative impacts” of the near constant deluge that’s left little time for floodwaters to recede.
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The parade of storms since the end of December is one of the biggest tests yet for disaster-weary California, which has endured a crucible of wildfires and extreme heat in recent years as global warming makes weather ever-more extreme.
Roads across the state have been overwhelmed with water, and five rivers are being monitored for flooding, including the Cosumnes River in Sacramento County and the Russian River in Napa and Mendocino counties in Northern California. San Francisco declared a rare flash-flood warning on Tuesday afternoon.
Heavy rain has been falling since Sunday night, and about 72,000 homes and businesses in the state were without power as of early Wednesday, according to PowerOutage.us.
PG&E Corp., the state’s biggest utility, said more than 1.6 million of its customers had lost power and had it resorted since Dec. 31.
Residents in the tony coastal enclave of Montecito, home to Oprah Winfrey, Ellen DeGeneres and Prince Harry, were told by state officials Monday to “LEAVE NOW” while shelter-in-place orders were issued in other parts of Santa Barbara County. Several other towns throughout the state advised residents to get out before more rivers flood.
The storms are among a series of atmospheric river events, long streams of moisture that can stretch for thousands of miles across the Pacific, then deliver as much water as flows through the mouth of the Mississippi River when they’re wrung out on California’s mountains. The bad weather already has caused more than $1 billion in losses and damages, according to an estimate by AccuWeather Inc.
Another storm forecast to hit Thursday will probably drag across Northern California, as well as Oregon and Washington, Anderson said. The US West region will likely see above-average rain for the next two weeks.
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In the past 15 days, San Francisco has recorded its third-highest cumulative rainfall amount since 1862, he said. “This gets up into territory we haven’t seen in terms of that much rain,” he added.
–With assistance from Lars Paulsson.
(Updates with NWS forecast in second paragraph, latest power outages in sixth.)
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