The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Powerful rain storm enters California, bringing flooding risk
LOS ANGELES — A powerful Pacific storm blew into southern and central California on Friday with winddriven heavy rains, triggering calls for evacuations, causing damage and injury as trees toppled and disrupting travel and outdoor events.
With the storm feeding on an atmospheric river of moisture stretching far out into the Pacific, precautionary evacuations of homes in some neighborhoods were requested due to the potential for mudslides and debris flows.
Numerous flights were delayed or canceled at the state’s airports.
“It’s crazy,” said Robin Johnson, an academic adviser at the University of California, Santa Barbara. “It’s just pouring down rain. The wind is just going nuts.”
The storm took aim at Southern California but also spread precipitation north into the San Joaquin Valley and up to San Francisco.
But it was not expected to bring significant rain in the far north, where damage to spillways of the Lake Oroville dam forced evacuation of 188,000 people last weekend.
The National Weather Service said the storm could end up being the strongest to hit Southern California since January 1995.
Rain and wind wiped out play in golf’s Genesis Open at the Riviera Country Club in Los Angeles, where a eucalyptus tree cracked. Elsewhere in the city a tree brought down power lines as it fell on a car, and a person was hospitalized for possible electric shock, the fire department said.
Another tree smashed a carport and vehicles in the Santa Barbara suburb of Goleta.
Knott’s Berry Farm amusement park in Orange County closed because the weather. High surf pounded beaches.
Rain fell in some areas at rates up to three quarters of an inch per hour and wind gusts hit 55 mph in the Malibu hills, the weather service said.
Total rainfall predictions ranged from 2 inches to 6 inches on the coast and from 5 inches to 10 inches in foothills and coastal mountain.
In downtown Los Angeles, Uber driver John Kim anticipated extra business from people not wanting to walk even short distances in the rain.
“It’s good for me,” he said. “So much rain, I get busy.”
With soil already saturated from significant rains this winter, forecasters warned of the potential for flash floods and debris flows, especially near areas left barren by wildfires.
The city of Duarte, in the foothills of the San Gabriel Mountains east of Los Angeles, ordered evacuation of 180 homes below a burn scar.
Up the coast, evacuations were urged for parts of Camarillo Springs in Ventura County and around an 11½-square-mile burn scar west of Santa Barbara.
In Northern California, officials monitoring the stricken Oroville Dam on the Feather River said they were confident the reservoir would handle any runoff from expected storms because ongoing releases have been lowering the lake’s level since its spillways were damaged last week.
“There is more than enough room in the lake to continue accommodating incoming water and the lake level will continue to be lowered,” the state Department of Water Resources said Friday.
After five years of drought, California has seen a long series of storms that have filled reservoirs and loaded the Sierra Nevada with snow. Runoff from the snowpack normally supplies about a third of the state’s water.
According to the U.S. Drought Monitor, only about 24 percent of the state remained in moderate, severe or extreme drought as of Thursday.