California, which has been battered by an “incessant parade of hurricanes” according to the weather services, will experience fresh flooding on Thursday after flooding and landslides have already claimed at least 18 lives.
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The bad weather forecast is heading towards the northern part of this western American state, the National Weather Service (NHS) has warned. Other states on the Pacific Northwest coast are expected to be affected early Saturday, he later added.
“The heaviest rains are expected to hit Northwest California over the next two days,” with rainfall of up to a few inches, according to the NHS.
The torrential rains of the past few days on already waterlogged soils have caused major power outages, numerous floods, uprooted many trees and cut off major roads, with the floods sometimes sweeping motorists away.
In places, amounts of precipitation were recorded that had not been reached for 150 years.
A portion of northern California was placed under flood or winter weather warnings on Wednesday.
In Aptos, a small town just over an hour’s drive south of San Francisco, residents are trying to recover from the flooding of the past few days.
“It’s probably the worst flooding I’ve seen since I moved here in 1984,” Doug Spinelli told AFP.
The town’s stream “flowed so violently (…) that tree trunks broke into the river, almost one every thirty seconds,” said this resident. “It was amazing to see the amount of debris and wood that the river was carrying.”
More than 35,000 homes and businesses were without power as of early Thursday, according to specialist website PowerOutage.us.
California Gov. Gavin Newsom warned of less severe but equally dangerous storms.
“This place is soaked. And now, less rainfall can have a bigger impact on local conditions,” he warned, stressing that bad weather is forecast to continue at least until January 18.
According to their services, the storms of the past few weeks have claimed at least 18 lives, “more than the forest fires of the past two years”.
In Paso Robles, in central state, a five-year-old child remained missing after being swept away by waves on Monday while his mother, who survived, was driving him to school.
Research is still ongoing and “we will continue (…) until we find it,” Tony Cipolla, a spokesman for the San Luis Obispo County Sheriff’s Services, assured local media.
According to the Los Angeles Times, fatalities from recent storms include motorists trapped in their cars by flooding, local residents crushed by falling trees, a couple killed by a landslide and bodies washed away by the waves became.
According to the weather services, California is currently experiencing “an endless onslaught of atmospheric flows” not seen since 2005. Rarely encountered are these “Rivers of Heaven,” which form with water vapor from the tropics and pour down the west coast of the United States in downpours.
While it is difficult to establish a direct link between these storm series and climate change, scientists regularly state that warming increases the frequency and intensity of extreme weather events.
Last week’s storm had already knocked out power to tens of thousands of people, causing severe flooding and triggering landslides. It had come just days after another torrential downpour on New Year’s Eve.
However, they will not be enough to replenish California’s water reserves. Experts say several winters with above-average rainfall would be needed to compensate for the drought of recent years.