At least two deaths. Tens of thousands of Northern California homes and businesses without power. At least three breached levees in the Sacramento area. Road and freeway closures, landslides, mudslides, floods, fallen trees. Mandatory evacuations, including of more than 1,000 inmates at the Rio Cosumnes Correctional Center in Sacramento County and of 19 elderly residents from a flooded Castro Valley nursing home. A 10-foot sinkhole that formed at the entrance to the Oakland Zoo, forcing it to close until at least Jan. 17.
These were just some of the effects from a massive atmospheric river that pummeled Northern California over the weekend, causing widespread flooding near Sacramento and prompting San Francisco to notch its second-wettest day in more than 170 years on Saturday, when 5.46 inches of rain fell. Another, potentially even more powerful storm is expected to hit California on Wednesday, following a projected reprieve today and comparatively light rain and snowstorms Monday. The California Governor’s Office of Emergency Services said in a statement that it’s coordinating with local governments — including in response to the levee failures — and has pre-positioned resources in critical areas.
- A National Weather Service forecaster for the San Francisco Bay Area wrote Monday: “To put it simply, this will likely be one of the most impactful systems on a widespread scale that this meteorologist has seen in a long while. The impacts will include widespread flooding, roads washing out, hillside collapsing, trees down (potentially full groves), widespread power outages, immediate disruption to commerce, and the worst of all, likely loss of human life. This is truly a brutal system that we are looking at and needs to be taken seriously.”
- The brutal series of storms could test the state’s emergency response less than two weeks after a 6.4-magnitude earthquake struck Humboldt County, killing at least two residents and damaging critical infrastructure. A 5.4-magnitude quake hit the county again on New Year’s Day, a stark reminder that more than 1 million Californian homes need to be structurally retrofitted.
- One (sort of) silver lining: The storms are a welcome antidote to California’s persistent drought and have helped replenish its snowpack. But just how much of a long-term difference they will make remains to be seen: “It just has to sustain itself, because we still have two more of the wettest months of the year to go, and we really need them to be wet as well, where (in 2022) they were record dry,” Mike Anderson, state climatologist at the Department of Water Resources, told the Los Angeles Times.
