West Coast Aavalanche Warnings and Power Failures due to a High-Impact Storm on Wednesday, and Potential Loss on New Year’s Day
More than 115,000 customers in the western United States are without power as a result of a strong storm system that brought heavy rain, mountain snow and Hurricane-force wind gusts.
All 11 Western states are under winter weather alerts Wednesday, with about half a million people along the higher elevations of the Rockies under high wind alerts as gusts could reach Category 1 hurricane strength. There are power failures in parts of Oregon, Washington and California.
The region is being inundated by an atmospheric river which is a long and narrow region in the atmosphere that can carry many thousands of miles and has been hit hard by a deadly winter storm.
In the West, there have been lashing rain, wind and snow that are moving inland and are predicted to spread to the mountains on Wednesday. More rounds of rain and snow are expected to come on top of each other at the end of the week, making for a brief lull on Wednesday.
The National Weather Service offices across the state of California, as well as the cities of Portland, Ore., and Los Angeles, were warning people to beware of damaging winds that could reach over 70 mph in some areas.
“This is really going to help a lot with the short-term drought in Northern California, perhaps even erase short-term drought conditions, but it’s going to take a lot more to completely obviate the longer term, multi-year drought impacts,” Swain said, emphasizing that Wednesday’s atmospheric event will be a “high-impact storm.”
Northern California and the Bay Area could see the most damage from the storms by the end of Thursday, but the coast is expected to get the worst of it Wednesday morning.
The avalanche alerts are in effect as lower elevations across the West could see five-day snowfall totals of 2 to 8 inches, with some areas getting as much as a foot. More mountainous high elevations are expected to get at least one foot of snow, with isolated areas getting over three feet.
LOS ANGELES — California was drying out and digging out on New Year’s Day after a powerful storm brought drenching rain or heavy snowfall to much of the state, snarling traffic and closing major highways.
The number of customers still without power in the state’s capital was down to 40,000 as of early Sunday from more than 150,000 a day earlier.
Flood Warnings and Flood Watches for California and Santa Cruz County on Saturday, May 2 during the Second Weakest Day in California’s History
In California and Santa Cruz County, there were several communities that were forced to evacuate on the same day because of rising flood waters.
It was expected to become the second wettest day in the area’s history on Saturday with 5.46 inches of precipitation.
Weather service meteorologist Courtney Carpenter said the storm could drop over an inch of rain in the Sacramento area before moving south. The chair lifts at the South Lake Tahoe ski resort were closed due to operational and flooding problems, and a photo of the lift surrounded by water was posted on the ski resort’s website.
The map shows a wide range of precipitation totals in the region, from less than an inch in some areas to more than 5 inches in the Sierra foothills.
The police department posted photos of the underpass and the car that appeared to be stuck in the water.
There were worries about excessive rain and flooding on the Cosumnes and Mokelumne rivers, so a flash flood watch was put in place along and west of 5 freeway.
The National Weather Service’s office in the county that was hit by the earthquake said that the roads started to flood. A bridge that was temporarily closed last week due to earthquake damage may be closed again if the Eel River, which it crosses, gets too high, officials said.
The weather system is expected to bring light to moderate valley rain and mountain snow to the area Monday and Tuesday, according to the National Weather Service in Sacramento.
The weather service in Reno said that strong winds could cause tree damage, and that high waves can capsize small vessels.
On the Sierra’s eastern front, flood watches and warnings were issued into the weekend north and south of Reno, Nevada, where minor to moderate flooding was forecast along some rivers and streams.
The rain was falling in Southern California. On New Year’s Day, the region will begin drying out and there will be no precipitation during the Rose Parade.
On top of urban flooding, several rivers began overflowing, including the Cosumnes and Mokelumne rivers and the Mormon Slough, according to the National Weather Service in Sacramento. Flood warnings were issued for the south of the valley.
Three communities near the city of Watsonville were also told to evacuate by the Santa Cruz County Sheriff’s Office due to creek flooding, while the rising San Lorenzo River waters prompted evacuations in the communities of Paradise Park and Felton.
NWS told residents to stay put as flooding impacts continue to intensify, with too many road closings to count at this point.
Sacramento Metropolitan Fire District crews were kept busy on Saturday, performing water rescues and responding to fallen trees on homes and cars, and to drivers whose vehicles became disabled after they drove through standing water, officials said.
Calling it “Stormageddon,” the Amador County Sheriff’s Office shared an image of cars up to their doorhandles in floodwaters and said there’s been reports of flooding, mudslides and trees blocking roadways.
“The roads are extremely slick so let’s all work together and slow down so we can keep I-80 open,” the California Highway Patrol said on Twitter. State Route 50 reopened as did several other highways.
Interstate 80 was also partially closed near the Nevada line midday Saturday “due to multiple spinouts over Donner Summit,” according to the California Department of Transportation.
Residents were advised to avoid travel as winds of up to 55 mph destroyed trees and covered the roads with debris in the area.
The county proclaimed a state of emergency, saying the atmospheric river has caused “significant transportation impacts, rising creek and river levels and flooding” in the Wilton area.
Travelers are warned by the Weather Service that travel could be difficult to impossible in the Sierra Nevada mountains, where the winter storm warning is in effect.
The Sierra Snow Lab recorded 24-hour snow totals of 29.9 inches, Bear Valley Ski Resort recorded 21 inches, Boreal Ski Resort received 40 inches, Sierra at Tahoe Ski Resort 42 inches and Soda Springs saw 40 inches, according to the Weather Service.
On Saturday the ski resort said that all lifts were covered with ice and that it was too dangerous to do any work in the mountain.
New Year’s Eve Traffic on State Route 80, Interstate 80 and the Dillard Street Area: Hundreds of Free Passengers Rescued in Flood Waters
At the Nevada State line and Colfax, CHP reported “dangerous and treacherous” driving conditions with dozens of vehicles stuck on the I-80 and county roads.
Dozens of drivers were rescued on New Year’s Eve along Interstate 80 near Lake Tahoe after cars spun out in the snow, the California Department of Transportation said. The key route from the San Francisco Bay Area is open again to passenger vehicles with chains.
Aerial video from CNN affiliate KCRA showed cars submerged past their doorhandles in flood waters from Highway 99 and the Dillard Street area. Chris Schamber, a fire captain with the Cosumnes Fire Department, told the station “dozens upon dozens” of people had been rescued.
At least two people died in the storm, including one who was found dead inside a completely submerged vehicle Saturday in Sacramento County, and a 72-year-old man who died after being struck by a fallen tree at a Santa Cruz park, according to officials.
Strong tornadoes and hail could be seen in parts of Texas, Oklahoma, Arkansas and Louisiana on Monday. Storms are expected to begin in the afternoon and will last through the overnight hours.
Glanville Tract and Franklin Pond were put under an escort and evacuated on Sunday, while the rural Point Pleasant area was put under an order.
The agency expects the flooding from the Cosumnes River and the Mokelumne River to reach these areas in the middle of the night.
The California Department of Transportation said that the road was closed because of the flooding from the Cosumnes River. “SR 99 is one of the state’s heavily traveled, and commercially important, corridors,” its website adds.
A New-Year Warning to Residents of the Northern California Long-Term Floods and Mudslides after the 2017 Santa Maria Maria Storm
Forecasters in Northern California have a sobering new-year message for people who are reeling from floods and mudslides: the situation could get worse before it gets better.
More than 39,000 electricity accounts are without power in California and another 20,000 in Nevada, according to PowerOutage.us.
Mary Spencer- Gode and other people were looking at the damage after the storm knocked over an elm tree on New Years Eve.
“The wind was just going crazy,” she told Capital Public Radio. “We turned our TV off so we could hear it, and I was sitting in the kitchen, I heard a big ‘woosh’ and kind of the house moved.”
“It’s just a narrow area of high moisture that gets transported away from the tropics towards the higher latitudes,” often before a cold front arrives, as NWS senior forecaster Bob Oravec recently told NPR.
Atmospheric rivers are more likely to occur in a La Niña climate pattern like the one we’re now seeing, with waters in the Pacific Ocean cooler than average. Climate.gov states that for the third winter in a row, La Nia has prevailed.
The precipitation can be extreme: A single atmospheric river “can carry more water than the Mississippi River at its mouth,” as NPR has reported. The forecasts warn that the winds are very dangerous. The Calaveras Big Trees State Park’s historic Pioneer Cabin Tree was destroyed in the storms of 2017).
Forecasters have been raising alarms about the storm for days now, saying it could start to affect land as early as Tuesday night. They said the system would move slowly and that it was still approaching the West Coast as of Wednesday morning.
The NWS office in Los Angeles said that the most intense part of the weather event will last through Thursday. A cold front is bound to entrain the water of a moderate river.
The California Flood Threat: Impacts of Climate Change, High-Temperature Collision, and Destructions Due to a Multiple Bomb Cyclone
There are sites where there have not enough ground cover to absorb and retain moisture, which is the reason for the high risk of mudslides.
The storm became a bomb cyclone Wednesday, after it rapidly strengthened while still offshore. Within 24 hours a bomb cyclone can intensify by a factor of 24. Millibars are a unit used to measure atmospheric pressure.
According to the National Weather Service, the storm could trigger more widespread flooding, roads washing out, hillside collapsing, fallen trees, major power outages, “immediate disruption to commerce, and the worst of all, likely loss of human life.”
“The face of droughts is changing,” Swain said. “It’s easier and easier to get into a drought – even following a really wet winter – because we just have that growing evaporative demand and hotter summers.”
Despite the dangers that come from the storms, they are still desperately needed to alleviate the shortage of water, according to a climate scientist in San Diego.
A study done in 2022.authored by Swain found that climate change will cause a mega flood in California in the next four decades, doubling the chances that it will happen.
“We haven’t seen the mega floods, but we have definitely seen hints of increasingly extreme precipitation even in the middle of what has otherwise been a period characterized by a pretty severe and persistent drought,” Swain said.
It’s worth noting that last year was relatively much wet around this time, and that the state was still in a dry spell for the rest of the year.
“We anticipate that this may be one of the most challenging and impactful series of storms to touch down in California in the last 5 years,” said Nancy Ward, at a late-morning news conference about the threat.
Weather experts warned people in their coverage areas to prepare for potential power outages and travel disruptions, as well as for debris and felled trees, due to high winds.
A different storm that brought deadly floods to this area last weekend, could cause even more flooding and mudslides, with a one inch per hour rain rate possible.
State Emergency Preparedness for the 2018 Santa Barbara Storm, an Outburst of California Bump Cyclones
The governor of California declared a statewide emergency on Wednesday to provide aid for those affected by the storm, which is the latest in a series of storms to wreak havoc on the state.
As the storm marched towards California, firefighters and rescue equipment were stationed near burn scar areas across seven counties, as well as five other counties with flooding concerns, state officials said.
Among the areas ordered to evacuate is Montecito, the site of a mudslide in 2018 that killed 23 people as mud and boulders the size of houses plowed down the Santa Barbara hillsides, splintering more than 100 homes and rupturing a gas main, according to the state’s Office of Emergency Services.
Das Williams, first district supervisor in Santa Barbara County, urged people to comply with the order to leave. “If you live in that red zone, the one thing that we should’ve learned these past five years is that it’s better to play it safe and to evacuate and comply with the order.”
Officials in Monterey County also started setting up evacuation points and emergency shelters ahead of the storm’s arrival, according to the sheriff’s Facebook page.
Rockslides forced the closure of a long stretch of coastal Highway 1 in both directions from Ragged Point in San Luis Obispo County to south of Big Sur in Monterey County, according to the California Department of Transportation.
San Francisco was under a flood warning Wednesday as the brunt of the storm started to hit the city, with Mayor London Breed saying “floods are inevitable.”
San Francisco fire officials posted images of a crew working to remove a tree on top of a car after they rescued a family trapped in their home.
Source: https://www.cnn.com/2023/01/05/weather/california-bomb-cyclone-flooding-powerful-winds/index.html
Footfall of Glass on Fox Plaza in Oakland, Calif., Dec. 24, 2011: A Los Alvarado Is Burgess Remediation Event
There were no injuries when glass fell from a high rise in Fox Plaza. The San Francisco Fire Department is not sure if this is wind related or not.
Oakland officials declared a local emergency Wednesday because of potential storm damage on Oakland roads and the possible threat to public safety.
Pacific Gas and Electric said the storm was damaging their equipment and causing widespread outages.
“We’re seeing a significant number of trees falling into our lines, as well as other impacts on our power system,” PG&E’s Teresa Alvarado said on Twitter. “We’ve mobilized for a major repair and restoration effort.”
Aaron Johnson, vice president of PG&E’s Bay Area region, said hundreds of crews are staged around the region, including some from Southern California Edison who are also aiding in the response.
It is possible that the storm may make it difficult for crews to access areas experiencing power failures.
“This is definitely going to be ranked up there with one of the storms that I’m going to remember,” Ashley Helmetag, a meteorologist, said in a Facebook video on PG&E’s page.