LOS ANGELES: The second of back-to-back atmospheric rivers battered California on Sunday, flooding roadways and knocking out power to nearly 850,000 people and prompting a rare warning for hurricane-force winds as the state braced for what could be days of heavy rains.
The storm inundated streets and brought down trees and electrical lines across the San Francisco Bay Area, where winds topped 60 mph (96 kph) in some areas. Gusts exceeding 80 mph (128 kph) were recorded in the mountains.
Just to the south in San Jose, emergency crews pulled occupants out of the windows of a car stranded by floodwaters and rescued people from a homeless encampment alongside a rising river.
In Southern California, officials warned of potentially devastating flooding and ordered evacuations for canyons that burned in recent wildfires that are at high risk for mud and debris flows. The National Weather Service office for Los Angeles warned that "all systems are go for one of the most dramatic weather days in recent memory."
On Sunday, customers called the Santa Barbara Home Improvement Center inquiring about sandbags, flashlights and generators, said assistant manager Lupita Vital. Sandbags sold out on Saturday, so people were buying bags of potting soil and fertilizer instead, she said.
"People are trying to get anything they can get that's heavy to use it as, you know, protection for their doors and everything," Vital said Sunday.
"This storm is predicted to be one of the largest and most significant in our county's history, and our goal is to get through it without any fatalities or any serious injuries," Santa Barbara County Sheriff Bill Brown told reporters Saturday. Classes were canceled Monday for schools across the county, which was devastated by mudslides caused by powerful storms in 2018.
Strong winds and heavy rain brought treacherous conditions to the coastal city of Ventura, west of Los Angeles, said Alexis Herrera, who was trying to bail out his sedan which was filled with floodwater. "All the freeways are flooded around here," Herrera said in Spanish. "I don't know how I'm going to move my car."
More than 847,000 customers were without electricity statewide by Sunday evening, with most of the outages concentrated in coastal regions, according to poweroutage.us.
Search and rescue workers investigate a car surrounded by floodwater as heavy rains caused the Guadalupe River to swell, Sunday, Feb. 4, 2024, in San Jose, California. AP PHOTOSix San Francisco Bay Area counties were at low risk of waterspouts coming ashore and becoming tornadoes, said the Storm Prediction Center. The last time the center forecasted a tornado risk in the region was in February 2015, according to the San Francisco Chronicle.
Winds caused hours-long delays at San Francisco International Airport. By 2:30 p.m. Sunday, 155 departing flights were delayed and 69 had been canceled, according to the tracking website FlightAware.
Palisades Tahoe, a ski resort about 200 miles (320 kilometers) northeast of San Francisco, said it was anticipating the heaviest snowfall yet this season, with accumulations of 6 inches (15 centimeters) per hour for a total of up to two feet (60 centimeters). Heavy snow was expected into Monday throughout the Sierra Nevada and motorists were urged to avoid mountain roads.
Much of the state had been drying out from the system that blew in last week, causing flooding and dumping welcome snow in mountains. The latest storm, also called a "Pineapple Express" because its plume of moisture stretches back across the Pacific to near Hawaii, arrived offshore in Northern California on Saturday, when most of the state was under some sort of wind, surf or flood watch.
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