Heavy rain was still battering California on Tuesday, where successive storms have already killed 16 people and prompted authorities to order the evacuation of many regions, including the wealthy city of Montecito, home to Prince Harry and Meghan Markle.
The torrential rains of the last two days on already flooded ground have caused major power outages, numerous floods, uprooting many trees and cutting off main roads, the flooding sometimes taking away motorists.
Repeated storms battering the western US state have killed 16 Californians in recent weeks, “more than the wildfires of the past two years,” Gov. Gavin Newsom’s office said in a statement.
Thousands of homes without electricity
In Paso Robles, a small town halfway between Los Angeles and San Francisco, a 5-year-old boy was swept away Monday and remains missing, according to a sheriff’s statement.
The flood had trapped the car in which he was traveling with his mother, who was rescued by a neighbor. Authorities had to suspend their search on Monday afternoon because of the weather. On Wednesday, shortly before midnight (Paris time), around 150,000 homes lost electricity, according to the specialized site PowerOutage.
According to the Weather Services (NWS), after a brief respite on Tuesday night, a new storm is expected to hit California on Wednesday, with up to 18 centimeters of rain in the north of the state.
California is currently experiencing “an endless rush of atmospheric rivers,” the likes of which have not been seen since 2005, according to the NWS. These “rivers of the sky,” which are formed by water vapor from the tropics and travel to then pour waterspouts on the west coast of the United States, are rarely as frequent.
frequent storms
Last week’s storm had already knocked out power to tens of thousands of people, triggered heavy flooding and landslides. It had arrived just days after another deluge of rain on New Year’s Eve.
The exceptional rains of the last days have already exceeded the average annual precipitation in several regions.
However, they will not be enough to replenish California’s water reserves. It would take several winters with above-normal rainfall to offset the drought of recent years, experts say.
Source: BFM TV
