Flood warnings and other weather advisories were in effect across the state on Wednesday morning, after an “atmospheric river” dumped more precipitation on land saturated with water.
LOS ANGELES — Millions of California residents were under extreme weather advisories early Wednesday morning, after another bout of high winds and heavy precipitation disrupted the electricity supply and forced evacuations and road closures.
Parts of California remained under flood or winter storm warnings as of 4 a.m., according to the National Weather Service, although the geographic scope of the advisories had tapered overnight. The brunt of the rain was in Los Angeles and Ventura counties, where forecasters expected rainfall to intensify before tapering off later on Wednesday. A flood watch was in effect until the afternoon for a wider swath of Southern California that includes Orange County and the San Bernardino Mountains.
More than two and a half inches of rain fell at the Santa Barbara Airport on Tuesday, the Weather Service said, and nearly two inches were recorded at Los Angeles International Airport. The rainfall was so intense, some stations around the state broke daily records.
On Tuesday, high winds in San Francisco forced the city’s international airport to briefly pause operations and blew a window out of a downtown skyscraper. No one was injured when that window fell to the ground, the city’s fire department said. Most of the roughly 190,000 electricity customers without power in California on Wednesday morning were in the San Francisco Bay Area, according to the tracking site poweroutage.us.
South of San Francisco, water from the Pajaro River in Monterey County breached a levee on Tuesday, forcing the closure of portions of Highway 1 in and around the Big Sur area until officials could clear fallen trees and power lines and assess the safety of bridges.
Pajaro is the latest California community to suffer a levee break in a season when “atmospheric river” storms have been dumping precipitation on a landscape already saturated with water, testing river walls that protect millions of residents from disaster.
The latest storm was expected to cause more flooding as it spread across the Central Valley and into the Sierra Nevada foothills overnight, including in areas that are not normally prone to it, National Weather Service said. A number of flood advisories were in effect until further notice.
In Oceano, a community in San Luis Obispo County where evacuation orders and warnings were in place overnight, residents said they were worried that a nearby levee that had been damaged by storms in January could fail, as one on the Pajaro River did on Saturday.
“If it does, it will flood here,” Willie Reed, 44, said as he sat on his front porch on Tuesday, watching the rain. Mr. Reed said that he and his fiancée had packed their bags and were ready to go. Near his house, ducks swam across a street already inundated with rain.
In Northern California, where the storm’s leading edge came ashore on Monday night, parts of the Sacramento River were running at near-record highs late Tuesday after heavy rain and thunderstorms, said Craig Shoemaker, a National Weather Service meteorologist. He said that raised the prospect of potential flooding in Red Bluff, a small city more than 100 miles north of Sacramento.
Because the thunderstorms hit areas that are not controlled in the same way that big reservoirs are, “it’s a little bit of a wild card just how much water is going to be coming down there tonight,” Mr. Shoemaker said from Sacramento just before midnight. “It’s something we’re going to be monitoring all night long.”
Flooding isn’t the only risk. At higher elevations, the latest “atmospheric river” piled more feet of snow on top of already groaning roofs. In many mountain communities, the worry is that the snow could become so heavy that it could cause roofs to collapse.
Road safety was also an issue. Sections of highways and roads in some parts of the state were closed early Wednesday by rockslides, flooding and downed trees loosened by the wind and rain, the California Department of Transportation said. Officials warned motorists to avoid driving where moving water covered the pavement.
A nearby portion of Highway 1 was closed because of the overflowing levee from the Pajaro River, the Monterey County Department of Emergency Management said. The river’s bridges are stable, but officials said they must be assessed before the highway could reopen.
Monterey was among the counties where Gov. Gavin Newsom declared a state of emergency this month. President Biden has approved a federal emergency declaration for California as well.
The storm on Tuesday was the latest bout of severe weather in what is shaping up as one of the state’s most ferocious winters in recent memory. Previous storms have forced some residents to evacuate from floods and trapped others in their homes beneath mounds of snow.
The southern portion of the Sierra Nevada now has what may be its deepest snowpack on record, according to Daniel Swain, a climate scientist at the University of California, Los Angeles. Scientists say this winter has already been the third snowiest on record for the central Sierra.
There is evidence that the United States can expect more unusual severe storms as the planet heats up, potentially striking in new places or at unexpected times of year.
Katya Cengel contributed reporting from Oceano and San Luis Obispo, Calif. April Rubin contributed reporting from New York.
