A deadly, atmospheric-river fuelled storm caused chaos across California on Monday, battering the state with record amounts of rain, destructive mudslides, and violent winds that left at least three people dead from falling trees.
Nearly 38 million people are under flood alerts across the state and into Arizona, including about 10 million people in Los Angeles county. At least three people have died due to the storm, all struck by trees that toppled over in the fierce weather. But officials warned dangers still lurk in the waters that could continue to rise.
By Monday afternoon, the storm remained stalled out over the Los Angeles area and forecasters warned the unrelenting stream of rain – falling at roughly half an inch per hour – could reintensify through the afternoon. The National Weather Service (NWS) warned that the storm will continue to hammer the region through Tuesday.
The storm has produced alarming amounts of rain so far, with some areas of Los Angeles totaling more than 10in. The University of California, Los Angeles, located on the west side of the city, received more than 11.8in – more than three times the average amount that falls in the entire month of February, UCLA climate scientist Chad Thackeray reported.
Streets in the steep hillside communities across Los Angeles turned into rushing rivers overnight as some residents scrambled to evacuate. Local reporters described seeing clothes, books and even refrigerators cascading down roads alongside debris pulled from damaged homes and multimillion-dollar houses in the Beverly Crest neighborhood were inundated with mud after two landslides converged on the area.
As the storm lingered over the Los Angeles basin, officials were particularly worried about the Santa Monica mountains and the Hollywood Hills . Early Monday morning, the NWS station in Los Angeles warned that an “extremely dangerous” situation was unfolding there. “Life-threatening landslides and additional flash flooding expected overnight tonight. Avoid travel if at all possible,” it read.
In the Hollywood Hills, Fox 11 said a resident on Caribou Lane had told the station that “the whole hillside came down, shoved the house into our road here and up against our neighbor’s porch and driveway, and it trapped a few people”.
By mid-day on Monday, the NWS reported that Topanga, Bel Air, Sepulveda Canyon and Woodland Hills had all been hit with more than 10in of rain in two days. Downtown Los Angeles had gotten nearly 6.5in, and the rain was still coming down.
Los Angeles mayor Karen Bass said during a Monday news conference that it’s been “a tough day for our city”. Bass had viewed some of the damage caused by the severe storm and said she is in regular communication with California governor Gavin Newsom and vice-president Kamala Harris, who both said they are ready to help. “I know this is hard but, Angelenos, we will get through this,” the mayor said.
Newsom, California’s governor, declared a state of emergency for Los Angeles, Orange, Riverside, San Bernardino, San Diego, San Luis Obispo, Santa Barbara and Ventura counties.
The storm was the second to hit California in less than a week. The system bore down on Sunday afternoon, whipping up destructive gusts of winds in northern California and along the central coast and unleashing torrents of rain and snow, prompting the National Weather Service to issue a rare warning about hurricane force winds.
An elderly man was killed in Yuba City, in northern California, when a redwood tree fell in his backyard. In Boulder Creek, a small town in the Santa Cruz mountains, one person was reportedly killed on Sunday when a tree fell on a home. The person was trapped in the residence and died on scene, while another person was able to escape, the Santa Cruz county sheriff’s office said. Elsewhere, authorities in Sacramento county said a 41-year-old man was killed by a falling tree on Sunday, when winds reached close to 70mph.
Powerful wind gusts knocked down power lines, leaving half a million homes and businesses without power Monday morning, according to poweroutage.us. By the afternoon, utility companies made progress restoring service to impacted areas, but roughly 379,000 customers remained in the dark.
The weather service’s San Francisco Bay Area office issued a “hurricane force wind warning”, the first ever such warning issued by the office.
Across the San Francisco Bay Area, winds exceeded 60mph (96km/h), with gusts exceeding 80mph (128km/h) in the mountains. The heavy rainfall inundated streets, and the wind knocked down trees and power lines. In the technology center of San Jose to the south, emergency services pulled stranded motorists out of cars caught in floodwaters and rescued people from a homeless encampment alongside a rising river.
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As the storm moved south, 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. In Santa Barbara, hit by mudslides in 2018, schools were cancelled on Monday.
Evacuation orders and warnings were in effect for mountain and canyon areas of Monterey, Santa Barbara, Ventura and Los Angeles counties.
“If you have not already left, please gather your family, your pets, your medications and leave immediately,” Lindsay Horvath, the Los Angeles county supervisor, told residents of Topanga and Soledad canyons.
During a news conference Monday, Los Angeles fire chief Kristin Crowley said more than 120 mudslides and debris flows had been reported in the city as a result of the storm.
“As the storm continues, there are many water-soaked hillsides that have the potential to slide. We would like to reiterate to use extreme caution if you live or travel in these areas,” she said.
“All the freeways are flooded around here,” Ventura county resident Alexis Herrera, who was caught in the deluge, told the Associated Press. “I don’t know how I’m going to move my car.”
Much of California was still drying out from previous stormthat also caused flooding in lower elevations and snowfall in mountains. Both storms were caused by “Pineapple Express” systems, atmospheric rivers that pickup plumes of moisture from the Pacific near the Hawaiian islands.
But the second storm also packed a punch on its own, in large part because of the downbursts of rain it dropped and moments when it stalled out over populated areas. Ryan Kittell, a meteorologist at the weather service’s Los Angeles-area office, said the slow speed of the storm was exacerbating the rainfall.
“The core of the low pressure system is very deep, and it’s moving very slowly and it’s very close to us,” Kittell said Sunday. “And that’s why we have those very strong winds. And the slow nature of it is really giving us the highest rainfall totals and the flooding risk.”
Dani Anguiano and the Associated Press contributed reporting