Here’s the latest on the storm. (2024)

Pinned

Here’s the latest on the storm.

“We’ve got more rain coming, heavy rain, through the overnight hours,” said Joe Sirard, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Oxnard, north of Los Angeles. “Plus the existing rain that we’ve had, plus the rain we had earlier this week.”

As a result, Mr. Sirard said, the already saturated ground could slide, rivers and streams could overtop their banks, and streets in low-lying areas could flood.

Here’s what else to know:

• The National Weather Service issued a flash flood warning until midnight Pacific time for all of Los Angeles County, which includes Downtown Los Angeles, where the Grammy Awards were held Sunday evening. Just before 5 p.m. on Sunday, forecasters said another two to five inches of rain could fall in the area.

• Evacuations were ordered for parts of Santa Barbara County near waterways, including all state campgrounds. Water was rising so quickly near Mission Creek in the city that police officers began knocking on doors to urge residents to leave.

• Residents were also told to evacuate in the La Tuna Canyon Road area and the northern portion of Topanga Canyon in Los Angeles County, as well as unincorporated parts of Ojai.

• Officials in Orange County issued a voluntary evacuation warning for some sparsely populated areas where homes are tucked into wooded hillsides, and warned that the warning could become a mandatory evacuation order “with little or no notice.”

• On the coast between Los Angeles and Santa Barbara, the major concern was heavy rainfall: potentially an inch an hour, and up to eight inches over a 24-hour period. Farther north, the danger was winds ripping down trees and power lines. Overall in the state, more than 870,000 customers had lost power as of Sunday evening, according to PowerOutage.us.

• Nineteen people were rescued off the coast of Long Beach on Sunday afternoon after winds broke the mast off their boat and the 40-foot vessel hit rocks, said Brian Fisk of the Long Beach Fire Department.

• In Northern California, pounding rain and heavy winds felled a tree in San Francisco that blocked a major thoroughfare, and wind gusts in the nearby mountains reached a top speed of 88 miles per hour, officials said — the equivalent of a Category 1 hurricane. Forecasters with the National Weather Service called it “one of the most dramatic weather days in recent memory.”

Advertisem*nt

SKIP ADVERTIsem*nT

Here are the latest rainfall totals for the Los Angeles area.

A lot of rain, by local standards, had already fallen by Sunday night, with some locations doubling their two-day cumulative rainfall totals between 6 p.m. and 10 p.m. Here are the Weather Service’s two-day cumulative rainfall totals for six locations across Los Angeles County as of 10 a.m. local time on Monday:

Los Angeles International Airport: 3.40 inches

Pasadena: 5.28 inches

Santa Barbara: 3.88 inches

Santa Monica Airport: 5.76 inches

Topanga: 10.8 inches

Ventura: 3.49 inches

Bel Air: 10.59 inches

Colbi Edmonds contributed reporting.

Advertisem*nt

SKIP ADVERTIsem*nT

Storm-battered Los Angeles faces another day of heavy rainfall.

“The major wind and power outages will be the less dangerous part of the storm, relative to what’s about to unfold, and is starting to unfold, in Southern California,” Dr. Daniel Swain, a climate scientist with the University of California, Los Angeles, said during an online briefing on Sunday evening.

Already, the region has been lashed by record rainfall. Mudslides covered the canyon roads in and out of Malibu, according to the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department. And in the Studio City neighborhood, firefighters evacuated six people from homes as water dragged debris down into the area, the Los Angeles Fire Department said.

Officials urged residents to brace for more flooded streets in the valleys and mudslides in the mountains on Monday. The entire county, home to almost 10 million people, was under a flash flood warning until midnight.

As of Sunday night, more than four inches of rain had fallen on the Santa Monica Mountains, and the totals were rising at rates of more than half an inch per hour, according to Joe Sirard, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Oxnard, north of Los Angeles.

When rain falls in large quantities on the mountains, it rushes downhill — sometimes taking the saturated land with it — and collects in low-lying areas, such as the vast sprawl of the San Fernando Valley, which can leave intersections and streets under water.

Rivers and streams could swell, overtopping their banks and flooding the neighborhoods surrounding them. “Many, many hours of rain adds up,” Mr. Sirard said.

Soumya Karlamangla contributed reporting.

Advertisem*nt

SKIP ADVERTIsem*nT

A blustery day leads to damage in the San Francisco Bay Area.

While communities in Northern California had been concerned about flooding before the storm hit, the fierce winds ended up causing more problems.

Towering trees fell onto highways and blocked traffic. Ferries on the San Francisco Bay were called back to shore. An outdoor dining structure in Noe Valley even slid into the middle of the road before bar patrons and neighbors ran outside and pushed it back into place.

In Marin County, winds approached 90 miles per hour on mountain tops and took down trees, power lines and structures.

Trina Baucom, 60, was less than 100 feet from the Point Reyes Lighthouse parking lot when she turned around. Rocks and sand flew across the roadway as her Jeep Wrangler swayed on a narrow road more than 200 feet above the Pacific Ocean.

“It was pretty scary up there,” she yelled over the wind and sideways rain.

On a cattle ranch just east of the lighthouse, William Nunes, 27, watched as the wind ripped a calf hutch from the ground and sent it flying into the air and over a hill.

Next went the roof to his cattle barn. Several sheets of metal as long as two cars were torn off and landed beside dozens of wet cows. The metal sheets shook violently, with the wind threatening to send them flying again, until two ranch workers secured them to the manure-covered ground while Mr. Nunes poured gravel on top to weigh them down.

In San Francisco, one of the most dramatic scenes of the storm unfolded at 18th and Market streets, a half-mile west of the Castro District. A giant pine on a city-owned hill fell in the middle of the morning, causing a small landslide that sent dirt and tree limbs tumbling into the road.

Officials closed that part of Market Street, a major thoroughfare, as they waited hours for arborists to arrive and remove the tree. Sgt. Mike Mitchell of the San Francisco Police Department, who stood with other police and traffic control officers surveying the scene, said that the city simply did not have enough arborists to maintain its urban forest.

Elsewhere in the city, tree limbs and entire trees fell, including onto a car parked near Oracle Park, home of the San Francisco Giants, and across a road near Twin Peaks. The Department of Emergency Management warned people to “avoid walking in parks and other terrain with trees.” There were no reports of injuries from falling trees.

It also was high winds, more than the rain, that prompted the last-minute cancellation of the San Francisco Half Marathon on Sunday morning, bringing disappointment to some runners and relief to others.

It wasn’t all grim. By midafternoon, in a sunny respite between storms, a huge rainbow appeared over the city.

Advertisem*nt

SKIP ADVERTIsem*nT

Advertisem*nt

SKIP ADVERTIsem*nT

Advertisem*nt

SKIP ADVERTIsem*nT

More than 850,000 homes and businesses are without power.

Pacific Gas & Electric, which services customers in Northern California, the Central Valley and the coast down to Santa Barbara, said that their outages alone were affecting more than a million people on Sunday evening, as strong winds and fallen trees made it impossible for crews to make a full assessment.

“Our message to customers mainly is we’re working to assess the damage,” said Denny Boyles, a PG&E spokesman.

Before the storm, the utility company had warned customers to move patio furniture inside to prevent it from flying into power lines, he said, recalling a powerful storm a few years ago in which wind gusts sent a customer’s backyard trampoline flying.

Santa Clara County was the hardest-hit part of the state when it came to electricity outages. Nearly 140,000 homes and businesses had gone dark by Sunday evening as a result of the strong winds and heavy rain, said Scott Kleebauer, a forecaster with the National Weather Service. Flooding in the county even affected PG&E’s underground equipment.

Most of California was under either a wind advisory or high wind warning, Mr. Kleebauer added, noting that the rain could also cause mudslides with the potential to knock out power lines.

Several other regions were hit by power outages, including Sacramento, where more than 170,000 customers were without power — still far fewer than the 600,000 whose electricity was knocked out during last year’s storms, said Gamaliel Ortiz, a spokesman for the Sacramento Municipal Utility District.

“Last year was the measuring stick for us and we know what to prepare for,” he said, noting that the utility service had since increased the number of repair crews, damage assessors and office support staff members. But as the storm continued to clobber the state, worse impacts were certainly possible, Mr. Ortiz said.

“The possibility of the most damage is kind of right now,” he added. “We don’t know which way it’s going to go.”

Grammys continue as planned despite the dangerous storm outside.

Despite traffic and flight cancellations, the ceremony started on time — although Miley Cyrus, who clinched the first win of the night for best pop solo performance, said she nearly missed the start of the show.

“Oh my God, I just got stuck in the rain in traffic and thought I was going to miss this moment,” she said at the start of her acceptance speech.

Gov. Gavin Newsom of California declared a state of emergency for eight counties, including Los Angeles. Mayor Karen Bass warned earlier that Sunday’s storm had the potential to be “historic,” bringing intense winds, thunderstorms and the threat of tornadoes.

“If you are not home already, please get home and stay home,” Ms. Bass said.

Advertisem*nt

SKIP ADVERTIsem*nT

Advertisem*nt

SKIP ADVERTIsem*nT

Advertisem*nt

SKIP ADVERTIsem*nT

Advertisem*nt

SKIP ADVERTIsem*nT

There are early reports of property damage in Santa Cruz County.

“We’re going to stay open unless there’s a power outage,” Rob McPherson, 58, a worker at the Stagnaro Bros. seafood restaurant on the wharf, said as he set up for business.

“The wind is coming in sideways, it’s crazy,” he added, noting that he didn’t expect many customers. “I don’t know how we’re going to open the doors. Everything will be flying around.”

In the south part of the county, high winds have already caused some damage near the Opal Cliffs neighborhood. Paige Gordon, 42, said that after seeing a eucalyptus tree fall through her neighbor’s house around 9 a.m., she and her family packed their belongings to leave — only to see two trees, including one that was 60 feet tall, fall through her own roof and top floor.

No one — including her 7-week-old and 1-year-old — was hurt.

The family knew the trees were at risk of falling, and had asked the county to clear them in the two years since they moved in, but had been told that no funds were available, Ms. Gordon said.

“It’s been an ongoing struggle,” she said. “It wasn’t if, it was when.”

Other Santa Cruz residents, however, took advantage of the weather. At 12:30 p.m., three surfers and Danny Andreev, 27, a competitive kite surfer, went out in the swells next to the Santa Cruz wharf.

“I was headed off to Half Moon Bay in the morning, but there were trees and power lines down, so I had to turn around and come here,” he said from the beach.

He relished the high winds at first, but it later “got weird,” he said. When squalls started coming in, he got off his board and swam to shore.

“It’s pretty gnarly,” he said. “The water quality is terrible. I think all the sewage got in. I might just do a round of antibiotics when I get home.”

Santa Cruz city officials said later that there had been no sewage contamination near the wharf and that the city tests the water quality at its beaches at least once per week.

It’s been a winter of weather extremes in the Pacific Northwest.

In between these wild swings in temperature, an atmospheric river surged into the region, causing flooding and widespread threats of landslides and avalanches.

To the west of Seattle, one of Washington’s most frequently flooded waterways — the Skokomish River, just outside Olympic National Park — approached record levels last weekend, submerging low-lying farmlands and roads beneath rushing waters. The flooding persisted throughout the week.

“The weather is doing more damage than usual,” said Matthew Welander, the West Mason fire chief. “It hit some agricultural areas pretty hard, wiping out their fencing and all that.”

Torrential downpours caused rivers throughout the region to overflow and spill onto nearby land and roads, including in counties surrounding the Portland, Ore., area. In British Columbia, a flood watch was issued for all of Vancouver Island and other coastal regions near the U.S. border, with free sandbags being offered in some areas to hold back the waters.

While there were no reported injuries or major damage to homes as a result of flooding, landslides were another matter. In the coastal city of Astoria, Ore., a sluggish but persistent mudslide led to the evacuation of an entire neighborhood, with gas, water and power all shut down, and home foundations slowly shifted askew. An Amtrak route between Portland and Seattle was temporarily closed due to a landslide, as were roads in Seattle and a small town near the Skokomish River.

The combination of warmth and rain put large swaths of the region on shaky ground, with the National Weather Service warning of increased landslide risks in Western Washington due to the atmospheric river, and the Northwest Avalanche Center warning of “very dangerous” conditions in the Cascade and Olympic Mountains due to the unseasonable heat.

Advertisem*nt

SKIP ADVERTIsem*nT

Advertisem*nt

SKIP ADVERTIsem*nT

Advertisem*nt

SKIP ADVERTIsem*nT

In Alaska, record-breaking snow is reaching dangerous levels.

Homeowners have been climbing on top of their own houses, using shovels to clear piles of snow.

Given that winter is far from over, Anchorage is poised to break its snowfall record of 134.5 inches. Temperatures in recent days have also reached the lowest point of the season, adding to the strain. Utility officials asked residents to conserve natural gas and electricity.

In the state’s capital, Juneau, snowfall totals reached a record for the month of January, and more inches were piling up this weekend. Not only have buildings been at risk, but boats in the city’s harbors have sunk under the weight of snow.

Dozens of people living outside died in Anchorage last year, and officials are concerned that more could succumb this winter. Amid subzero temperatures, the city has issued an emergency declaration, establishing warming shelters, and the mayor has urged residents to donate winter gear and blankets.

Temperatures are supposed to rise in Anchorage next week, but more snow is still possible.

Advertisem*nt

SKIP ADVERTIsem*nT

How bad will it be? Maybe don’t trust that random social media post.

The ARkStorm is — potentially — a real thing, at least in models from the United States Geological Survey, which envisioned a scenario in which a 1-in-1,000-year megastorm could flood major West Coast cities. But Ms. Langlois is not a climate scientist or a weather expert — she’s an actor, she said later, with fewer than 5,000 social media followers.

No matter. Over the next several days, Ms. Langlois’s ARkStorm warning went viral, while the National Weather Service, the California Governor’s Office of Emergency Services and leading climate scientists rushed to quash the fear that a megastorm was about to swallow California.

“People want to increase their following on social media,” said Brian Ferguson, a spokesman for the California Governor’s Office of Emergency Services, “and one of the best ways is to go catastrophic and alarm people.”

The ARk uproar is just the latest example of misinformation spreading on social media and online platforms, where scientific evidence competes with conspiracy theories and lifelike photos generated by artificial intelligence. Caught in the middle, exasperated scientists and emergency officials say they are fighting an increasingly uphill battle to protect the weather report.

Members of the American Meteorological Society even hosted a panel on misinformation last week at the group’s annual conference in Baltimore, addressing the rise of false reports that can “proliferate via social media algorithms.”

“We’re trying to get good information into people’s hands,” said Paul Higgins, the group’s associate executive director. “But it seems there are always new sources of misinformation. And Whac-a-Mole is inefficient. There’s always going to be another mole to whack.”

Advertisem*nt

SKIP ADVERTIsem*nT

Here’s what happened when another atmospheric river hit California last week.

The storm was potent enough to push San Francisco’s cumulative rainfall total above normal for the first time this season, according Jan Null, an adjunct professor of meteorology at San Jose State University.

As the storm moved south, residents in Southern California awoke on Thursday to flinty gray skies, gusting winds and downpours. Flash flood warnings were posted for part of Los Angeles County near beaches and ports and on hillsides.

In Long Beach, flooding forced the closure of a crucial freeway, bringing traffic in the area — which can induce headaches even in sunny weather — nearly to a standstill. Flooding also closed the Pacific Coast Highway in Huntington Beach. And firefighters in Orange County said that they had rescued someone from a swollen storm drainage channel.

The storm arriving in Southern California on Sunday is likely to be more severe. Forecasters said that Californians should expect an atmospheric river like the ones that hit last winter, bringing the first significant precipitation to the state after several bone-dry years.

“We are in full preparation mode,” said Jackie Ruiz, a spokeswoman for the Santa Barbara County Office of Emergency Management, of the Sunday storm forecast. “We’re definitely encouraging people to stay local, hunker down and if there’s no urgent need to be on the road, stay off the road.”