Breaking News

California Storm Updates: Rain and Wind Lash State as It Braces for Flooding


SACRAMENTO — A powerful storm swirled over the California coastline on Wednesday, threatening more flooding, landslides and damaging winds across the state just days after it was drenched by another “atmospheric river.”

Usually, rainfall amounts like those expected this week would not have a significant impact. But the rain over the past weekend left the ground across much of California saturated, like a wet sponge, forecasters said, making the state more susceptible to flooding and rapid runoff.

That has left officials up and down the coast to contend with repeating deluges in a state that has spent much of the past several years dealing with drought and wildfires.

Gov. Gavin Newsom declared a state of emergency throughout California on Wednesday in order to more quickly marshal a storm response.

“Don’t let your guard down,” the National Weather Service warned.

At a neighborhood in the Bay Area city of Richmond, local officials worked on Wednesday to head off a landslide. Mayor Tom Butt said that a resident warned him on Tuesday about some scarp and rocks falling from a hill, which was saturated and visibly cracked after days of rain.

Nearby residents were evacuated, and on Wednesday morning contractors in hazmat suits worked to position a tarp on the hill to divert the rain to a nearby pond.

“Hopefully they can get that plastic up there and keep enough water out of the hill, to keep the slide from getting worse,” Mr. Butt said. “We’re doing all we can do,” he added.

In Sacramento, where forecasts called for up to three inches of rain in a region that was already inundated by a storm on New Year’s Eve, homeowners faced more power outages and flooding.

Ramona Saunders, 64, a retired government worker, stood shivering in a pelting rain outside a hardware store near her home in Carmichael, planning to buy flashlights and batteries. She said that a pepper tree outside her house had already blown over in the New Year’s Eve storm, and she was worried that the maple in her front yard would be next.

“I keep thinking, ‘Please don’t let this be the storm,’” she said. “I just don’t want to be on the 6 o’clock news.”

In the Mission District of San Francisco, doors of apartment buildings, coffee shops and restaurants were blocked by sandbags as residents awaited the storm.

Several streets in the low-lying neighborhood already experienced flooding over the weekend. But some stores, including King’s Refrigeration and Appliances, opened for business anyway.

Refrigerators that had been displayed on the sidewalk there began to float away in the pooling water on Saturday, said Jose Gomez, whose father owns the shop. “We had to hold them down so they didn’t get taken away in the current,” he said.

But Mr. Gomez was hopeful about the coming storm and said there were no plans to cut back hours. “Maybe it won’t rain that much,” he said.

The storm is expected to bring up to four inches of rain and winds of up to 40 miles an hour to California’s inland valleys, and gusts of 60 to 80 m.p.h. in the coastal hills, according to the Weather Service.

And with more storms on the horizon, the mountains could see more rain that may lead to flooding.

“Now that we have a saturated snowpack, we’re probably not going to get a lot more storage from the rain that falls on it,” said Andrew Schwartz, the lead scientist and manager at the Central Sierra Snow Lab of the University of California, Berkeley. “Meaning that if we do get rain, it’s likely that we will see some additional melt. So we’re really just crossing our fingers that it stays as snow.”

The situation underscores California’s water conundrum: The state desperately needs a very wet winter, but any time it is drenched by a big storm, there is also a risk of damage and chaos.

“This is a prime example of the threat of extreme flooding during a prolonged drought as California experiences more swings between wet and dry periods brought on by our changing climate,” Karla Nemeth, director of the Department of Water Resources, said in a statement.

The latest storm is part of a series of atmospheric rivers — channels of moisture from the tropical Pacific Ocean — that meteorologists expect will continue until mid-January. “The message to convey is resiliency, as this is not a ‘one and done’ storm,” the Bay Area office of the Weather Service said on Wednesday morning.

The atmospheric river that drenched the West Coast last week killed at least five people. Another storm system soaked California again before barreling east across the country on Tuesday, spawning strong tornadoes, thunderstorms and flooding in parts of the Plains, Upper Midwest and South after dropping snow on Utah and Arizona.

That storm was expected to decrease in intensity as it moved toward the East Coast, the Weather Service said. More rounds of heavy precipitation are expected to hit California on Saturday, and again on Monday.

Shawn Hubler reported from Sacramento, Soumya Karlamangla from San Francisco and Jacey Fortin from New York. Reporting was contributed by Julie Brown, Derrick Bryson Taylor, Jill Cowan, Christine Hauser, Judson Jones, Holly Secon and John Yoon. Alain Delaquérière contributed research.



Shared From Source link Breaking News

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *