New floods in California, hit by heavy rains

Another deluge fell Saturday on the state of Californiain the west of USAcausing extensive flooding, after three weeks of unprecedented rainfall that caused at least 19 deaths.

An impressive wave of rain – and snow in mountainous areas – swept away many areas of the country’s most populous state on Saturday, whose already flooded soils are reaching saturation point.

State Governor Gavin Newsom warned Californians that they are still not safe: “It’s not over”he said Saturday after visiting residents affected by the storms.

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Newsom urged residents to remain vigilant and continue to apply “common sense over the course of the next 24 to 48 hours.”

About 26,000 remain under flood watch Saturday night, according to the National Metereological Service (NWS), and tens of thousands are ordered to evacuate.

As of 11:00 p.m. GMT, there were approximately 20,000 homes without power, according to poweroutage.us.

more used to rain

In the Salinas region, a city of 160,000 inhabitants south of San Francisco, where the river of the same name overflowed, the flooding affected the agricultural corners of the valley but did not hit the urban areas, a journalist from the Salinas found this Saturday morning. AFP.

Under leaden skies and intermittent rain, the water course broke its course in some places, flooding hundreds of meters of fields.

In Spreckels, a small community near the river, most residents chose not to evacuate despite warnings from authorities.

In one of the areas, two tractors equipped with pumping equipment returned the stagnant water accumulated by the rains of recent days to the river, to prevent the soil from completely flooding.

“The region has been hit hard by drought in recent years”Manuel Paris, a 58-year-old farm worker, told AFP, amazed by the river that flows at full speed. “It’s been a long time, we are no longer used to seeing so much rain.”

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A series of storms has hit California in recent weeks. Brief outages barely give authorities time to clean up debris or restore power.

According to meteorologists, the wave of extreme weather has not ended.

A new one is expected to return on Monday “atmospheric river”, that is, a strip of humidity that transports large amounts of water from the tropics. The NWS warns that it will bring “new waves of extreme precipitation”.

a meter of snow

In the mountains, this phenomenon translates into heavy snowfall, with more than one meter forecast over the weekend in Sierra Nevada, for which reason the authorities warn about the risk of avalanches and advise against any movement.

Images released by authorities of a major highway in the Lake Tahoe region show dozens of cars stopped in the middle of a snow storm on Saturday morning.

At least 19 people have died since the start of this series of weather events. Drivers have been found trapped in their vehicles by waves, people have been injured after falling trees, a couple died in a landslide and bodies have been washed away by floodwaters.

California is used to extreme weather, and winter storms are common.

But scientists say climate change, fueled by human burning of fossil fuels, is making these events more ferocious.

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While it is wreaking short-term disasters, the rain is badly needed in the American West, where more than two decades of drought have imposed unprecedented restrictions on water use.

However, experts warn that even the monster downpours that have hit the region this month are not going to reverse more than 20 years of below-average rainfall.

Lake Shasta, the largest reservoir in the state, was still at just two-thirds of its historical average in early January, according to data from the department of water resources.

Source: AFP