Massive California storm brings flooding and triggers evacuations

Two motorists in California’s San Joaquin Valley are dead after a tree fell on State Route 99 in Visalia, according to the California Highway Patrol.

The weather-related death toll in recent storms has now climbed to 16. 

A large eucalyptus tree fell on a Ford pickup truck around 5:50 a.m. PT, killing the driver, according to CHP Officer Steve Beal. The tree, downed by the powerful storm, blocked all northbound lanes of the freeway and several crashes ensued, he said. A motorcyclist crashed into the tree and died. He was a 58-year-old man from the nearby town of Cutler, Beal said.  

He had no further details on the identity of the drivers or the number of crashes related to the downed tree. 

Beal said it is not clear if the tree was struck by lightning before it fell onto the road. 

Gov. Gavin Newsom on Monday evening said winter storms had claimed the lives of 14 Californians.

California has always been known for its Mediterranean climate — dry summers and wet winters that prime the landscape for a strong agricultural economy, renowned wineries and perfect weather for tourists from around the country.

But climate scientists say these same factors also make California vulnerable to extreme changes in climate and weather patterns, causing them to swing like a pendulum from drought to floods — a sort of “weather whiplash.”

Human-caused climate change is not just increasing the severity of extreme weather around the country, but it is also interrupting the usual patterns and increasing the potential for this weather whiplash, especially in California, to occur more often.

The parade of atmospheric river storms currently battering California is all happening against the backdrop of a yearslong, climate change-fueled megadrought that has drained the state’s reservoirs and triggered water shortages.

But while these storms usher in much-needed rainfall and snow to the dried-up state, the parched landscape is less able to absorb all the rain, causing widespread flooding due to the storm’s intensity and back-to-back nature.

A 2018 study in the journal Nature found that these huge swings in weather could occur twice as frequently in the future, with the most frequent swings in Southern California.

Extremely wet years are expected to become 2.5 times more likely by the end of this century, researchers found, while extremely dry years will occur up to 140% more frequently.

Climate scientists told CNN it’s time for California to rethink how it manages the wet times as the multi-year drought continues. How can it harness that water to be used in the dry months? Scientists suggest relying less on levees and letting the land around rives flood safely so the water has a chance to seep into underground aquifers.

Parts of Highway 101 were left a muddy mess amid flooding in California’s Ventura County, according to CNN’s Kyung Lah.

The freeway was washed over by water and caked in mud on Tuesday morning, leaving the road completely shut down in the area.

The Ventura River is below the freeway, which rose 17 feet in just 12 hours on Monday, Lah reported.

See it here:

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A large sinkhole opened up in Los Angeles’ Chatsworth neighborhood, cutting across a road, the Los Angeles Fire Department said in a Monday statement. Images from the scene showed at least two cars swallowed in the massive hole.

Four people were trapped in the sinkhole, two of whom freed themselves prior to LAFD’s arrival and were uninjured. The other two people had minor injuries and needed immediate rescue as road conditions continued to deteriorate, according to the release.

The sinkhole is “fully cutting across the southbound lane of Iverson Road,” and the road is now fully closed, it added.

Here’s an aerial view of the scene:

Two vehicles are seen in a sinkhole in Chatsworth, California, on January 10.

California Lt. Gov. Eleni Kounalakis is asking residents to stay alert as the Golden State continues to face battering rainstorms.

She encouraged everyone to stay vigilant as “every corner of the state is touched by these extreme events.” Kounalakis said people should evacuate when necessary and to be prepared with fresh batteries and flashlights. 

Kounalakis recalled the Montecito mudslides in 2018 and said that is part of the reason for such caution in Santa Barbara County but underscored the wide reach of the storm.

“It only takes six inches of water to lose control of a car to be knocked over. In 12 inches, cars start floating away and you’ve heard that creeks that have risen 14 feet just in the last day and in certain areas we’ve had over a foot of rain – just in the last 48 hours. So it is unbelievable,” Kounalakis said. 

She said the climate crisis is causing extreme weather events. Gov. Gavin Newsom declared a state of emergency and first responders are working overtime, she said.

“But is just a big task. It’s hard to be prepared for something this extreme, and again, one weather event on top of another the last two weeks and looking at another week or more of rain,” Kounalakis said. 

Drivers drove through flooded streets Monday night in Los Angeles, with floodwaters that reached a homeless encampment near the intersection of Willoughby and La Brea Avenues.

“I saw water overflowing onto the curbs,” Los Angeles resident Alan C. said. “The intersections at La Brea had pools of water.” 

A video captured by a Pacific Gas and Electric Company lineman shows a mudslide taking down a tree after its roots were loosened by heavy rains, PG&E said in a news release.

The lineman was working along Highway 9 in Santa Cruz, California, was not injured, PG&E said. 

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The United States was lashed by 18 catastrophic extreme weather and climate disasters costing at least $1 billion each last year, a new report shows. They came in the form of tornadoes, extreme heat and cold, deadly flooding and hurricanes and a climate change-fueled drought in the West.

When taken together, the country’s so-called billion-dollar disasters inflicted at least $165 billion in damage last year — surpassing 2021 disasters in cost — and caused at least 474 deaths, according to the report from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

Over the last seven years, 122 separate billion-dollar disasters have killed at least 5,000 people and cost the US more than $1 trillion in damages, NOAA reports.

Hurricane Ian, the Category 4 storm that left a trail of devastation across the Caribbean and Florida, carried the highest economic toll of nearly $113 billion, along with a death toll of 152, NOAA reports.

The second-costliest disaster was a blistering summer heat wave and the historic drought, which spread from the West to the Mississippi River, totaling about $22.2 billion in damages. 

Five of the last six years, except 2019, have seen disasters exceed the $100-billion mark, a signal that extreme weather events are becoming more costly and destructive as climate change accelerates.

“We’re talking big money here and it’s consistent,” Adam Smith, applied climatologist with NOAA who led the report, told CNN. “This is another trend where the cost and the impacts are quite large and so we need to think about how to better mitigate future damages because we know these extremes will continue to happen.” 

California has gone from extreme drought to extreme flooding.

A powerful storm — the latest to thrash the West Coast in recent weeks — continues to batter the state. On Monday, streets again turned into rivers, trees crashed down, homes lost power, rivers swelled and major roadways were shuttered.

Here’s a look at some of the scenes in California:

Colleen Kumada-McGowan stands in floodwaters in front of her home in Watsonville on Monday, January 9.

Crews work to clear a mudslide on Highway 17 in Scotts Valley on January 9.

Boone White leaps from his car after a large tree fell on it Thursday, January 5, while he was driving near Capitola. 

Sandbages are piled in front of a door in Capitola on Friday, January 6. 

See more photos here.

Atmospheric rivers are storms that draw an incredible amount of moisture from the tropical Pacific to the West Coast. They are essentially a conveyor belt of moisture in the atmosphere emerging from the warm waters of the Pacific Ocean.

They are crucial to the West’s water balance, providing much-needed rain and snow in the winter that replenishes reservoirs and underground aquifers. But they can also be incredibly destructive — they cause extreme flooding and mudslides, both of which can wash out roads and bridges.

An average atmospheric river carries more than 20 times the water the Mississippi River does, but as vapor.

While California is prone to floods from these storms as they come ripping off the Pacific Ocean, and major floods from them have happened before, the climate crisis is making these storms worse.

Scientists have linked the climate crisis to an increase in the amount of moisture the atmosphere holds, meaning storms like this one are able to bring more moisture inland than they would without climate change, which in turn leads to an increase in rainfall rates and flash flooding.

A 2022 study also found climate change has already doubled the chances of a disastrous megaflood happening in California in the next four decades – a storm unlike anything anyone alive today has ever experienced.

That study paints a picture of what California could face as the planet continues to warm. Experts say the chances of sudden transitions from severe drought to atmospheric river events will become more common in California in the coming decades.