Heavy rain forces Californians to flee, triggers mudslide

LOS ANGELES — Waves of heavy rain pounded California on Thursday, filling normally dry creeks and rivers with muddy torrents, flooding roadways and forcing residents to flee their homes in communities scorched by wildfires.

The storm turned on Southern California after walloping northern parts of the state and southern Oregon on Wednesday. A home slid down a hill in Sausalito, north of San Francisco, and a woman was rescued from the wreckage. At least 50 homes were evacuated after the mudslide struck a neighbourhood, KNTV reported.

Flash flood warnings blanketed a huge swath east and south of Los Angeles, including areas burned bare by a summer wildfire in the Santa Ana Mountains, where people were told to evacuate.

Conditions proved too wet for the Genesis Open at Riviera Country Club in Los Angeles, where play was halted after less than an hour. The Knott’s Berry Farm and Six Flags Magic Mountain theme parks closed.

The National Weather Service reported staggering rainfall amounts, including more than 24 centimetres over 48 hours at one location in the San Bernardino Mountains.

But trouble persisted in the saturated north, with flood warnings in effect for a large area of the upper Central Valley and around the San Francisco Bay Area.

The storm followed more than a week of severe weather in the Pacific Northwest and was the latest in a series of storms that has all but eliminated droughtlevel dryness in California this winter. It’s fuelled by an atmospheric river — a plume of moisture stretching across the Pacific Ocean nearly to Hawaii.

Nearly 37 per cent of California had no level of drought or abnormal dryness, the U.S. Drought Monitor reported Thursday. About 10.5 per cent of the state was in moderate drought, just over 1.6 per cent was in severe drought. The remainder was in the abnormally dry category.

The numbers reflect data gathered up to Tuesday.

Atmospheric rivers are long bands of water vapour that form over an ocean and flow through the sky. Formed by winds associated with storms, they occur globally but are especially significant on the West Coast.