ISLAMABAD/LOS ANGELES: The new burst of heavy, wind-blown rain and snow churned out of the Pacific into California on Tuesday, triggering scattered floods and mudslides, uprooting trees, and leaving hundreds of storm-weary residents under evacuation orders.
The newest onslaught, arriving on the second official spring day, was concentrated in Southern California, the state’s central coast and its agricultural heartland, still sodden from the relentless string of storms that began in late December.
Storm warnings
High-wind warnings and advisories were posted for a vast place stretching from the Mexico border through Los Angeles to the San Francisco Bay area. Storm warnings were in effect for high mountains, with many feet of snowfall forecast.
The National Weather Service (NWS) issued flood watches across a region of more than 17 million citizens, including most of greater Los Angeles and the large swath of western and central Arizona.
Gusty, gale-force conditions posed the bigger hazard around Santa Cruz and the Bay place, with sustained winds of 60 to 70 miles per hour toppling several trees and power lines, according to Frank Pereira of the NWS Weather Prediction Center.
Pereira said that there was at least one wind-related fatality: a person killed in a car by a fallen tree in Sonoma County, north of San Francisco.
More than 14,000 citizens statewide were under orders to seek higher ground because of huge flooding, with evacuation warnings announced for another 47,000 residents, said a spokesperson for the California Office of Emergency Services, Diana Crofts-Pelayo.
Crofts-Pelayo said that the bulk of evacuation orders, covering some 12,000 citizens, was in Tulare County, a flood-stricken region in the San Joaquin Valley where high water from recent levee breaches had inundated a number of communities.
