Thousands without power as California storms bring rain, snow and cold
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A large tree falling into flood waters from the Santa Clara River amid heavy rain washing away land and multiple trailers in Castaic, California, on Saturday.
PHOTO: AFP
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LOS ANGELES – Nearly 85,000 households and businesses were without power in the Los Angeles area on Saturday, as storms continued to pummel parts of California, bringing snow to higher elevations
Interstate 5, the largest highway leading north out of the city, remained closed at the steep grade known as the Grapevine owing to heavy snow, while several more southern points of the freeway in and around Los Angeles were closed because of flooding, said the California Department of Transportation.
In northern California, San Francisco was expected to experience record cold temperatures on Saturday, and the National Weather Service (NWS) warned residents of state capital Sacramento to avoid travel from Sunday to Wednesday as rain and snow started up again after a reprieve on Saturday.
“Extreme impacts from heavy snow and winds will cause extremely dangerous to impossible driving conditions and likely widespread road closures and infrastructure impacts,” the agency said on Twitter.
The next set of storms, which were expected to hit on Sunday, were set to bring wind gusts of up to 80kmh in the Sacramento Valley, and up to 113kmh in the nearby Sierra Nevada mountains. Yosemite National Park was to be closed until Wednesday because of severe winter conditions.
A massive low-pressure system driven from the Arctic was responsible for the unusual conditions, said Mr Bryan Jackson, a forecaster at the NWS Weather Prediction Centre in College Park, Maryland.
In southern California, “this is a rare case of a cold, significant storm event”, he said.
In a sight that must have delighted many Angelenos on Friday, snowflakes fell even around the Hollywood sign on Mount Lee in the hills above the city, known for its sunny days and palm trees.
On Saturday, scattered showers and isolated thunderstorms were expected to bring rain, hail and a mixture of snow and moisture called “graupel” to the area, the NWS said.
A separate storm that clobbered the United States’ Plains, Midwest and Great Lakes regions last week blew out to the Atlantic on Friday after passing over New England, the weather service said. More than 400,000 customers of Detroit-based DTE Energy remained without power on Saturday, the Detroit News reported.
Even before the latest storm, much of California had experienced an unusually rainy, chilly winter, starting with a spate of deadly “atmospheric river” storms that unleashed widespread flooding, felled trees and triggered mudslides in a state long plagued by drought and wildfires. REUTERS
