A powerful atmospheric river weather system has mostly moved through California but not before causing at least seven deaths and dousing much of the state.
Among the dead was a seven-year-old girl who was swept into the ocean by waves estimated up to 20ft at a state beach on Friday. The girl’s father, 39-year-old Yuji Hu, of Calgary, Alberta, was killed while trying to save her.
In northern California, in Sutter county, north of Sacramento, a 71-year-old man died after his vehicle was swept off a flooded bridge.
Much further south, a wooden boat believed to have been ferrying migrants toward the US from Mexico capsized in stormy seas off the coast of San Diego, leaving at least four people dead and four hospitalized.
The long plume of tropical moisture that formed over the Pacific Ocean began drenching the San Francisco Bay Area last Wednesday night and then unleashed widespread rain over southern California on Friday and Saturday.
Downtown LA saw more rain than any previous November, breaking a record previously set in 1985, the Los Angeles Times reported.
On Monday, lingering thunderstorms continued to pose a risk of mudslides in areas of Los Angeles county that were recently ravaged by wildfire.
“Due to the abundant rainfall the past couple of days, it will not take as much rainfall to cause additional flooding/rockslide conditions,” the National Weather Service said in a Sunday update. The agency advised the region on Monday to “be prepared for a soggy day”.
Rain was expected to continue through Tuesday, the weather service said, while another storm was forecast to arrive on Thursday.
South-east of Los Angeles there was flooding in the Palm Springs area and road closures throughout the desert area of the Coachella valley.
More than 4in of rain fell over coastal Santa Barbara county as the storm approached Los Angeles. Parts of the Sierra Nevada received more than a foot of snow.
Amid the climate crisis, warming oceans are supercharging such atmospheric river storms, making them deadlier and costlier.
Atmospheric rivers have long been important features of weather systems across the US west and are vital to replenishing the state’s reservoirs and snowpack. But filled with enough moisture to rival the flow at the mouth of the Mississippi – and often many times more – the strong systems that carry water across the Pacific also often cause the most destructive floods.
The Associated Press contributed reporting
