Southern Californians are facing an epic clean-up operation after the region’s wettest Christmas holiday in recent history turned areas of the state into a panorama of mud and debris.
A year ago, record wildfires scorched the dry neighborhoods of Altadena and Pacific Palisades. But now, in what scientists call “hydroclimate whiplash”, the picture is reversed after an atmospheric river off the Pacific Ocean brought the elemental opposites of wind and rain.
