Flash flood warnings were issued in portions of northern California on Sunday after a severe storm dumped heavy rain and snow overnight, clogging traffic and halting roadways as the state rang in the new year.
The Sacramento Bee reported that emergency officials warned residents in the Wilton area of Sacramento County to seek higher ground due to the potential of “imminent levee failure” on a part of the nearby Cosumnes River.
On Sunday, many roads were flooded, and rivers were over flood stage.
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In the upper Sierra Nevada, snow fell, and the National Weather Service in Sacramento issued a warning about hazardous driving conditions, posting photographs on Twitter of traffic on snow-covered mountain routes where vehicles needed chains or four-wheel drive.
On Friday and Saturday, an atmospheric river storm drew a long and wide plume of moisture from the Pacific Ocean. Flooding and rock slides caused road closures throughout northern California.
Although precipitation was decreasing as the new year began, the potential of flooding remained.
It was the first of several storms expected to roll across California over the next week. The current system is expected to be warmer and wetter, while next week’s storms will be colder, lowering snow levels in the mountains, said Hannah Chandler-Cooley, a meteorologist at the National Weather Service in Sacramento.
Chandler-Cooley said that the Sacramento area might receive four to five inches of rain during the next week.
The catastrophic weather occurred in the context of a longer-term picture of a historic mega-drought in the area and wider region, punctuated by devastating wildfires over a protracted season, that adds up to a climate disaster in the American west.
Meanwhile, some 300 miles north-west of Sacramento, an earthquake with a preliminary magnitude of 5.4 struck the area of Rio Dell in Humboldt County on Sunday.
There were no reports of injuries, but the quake occurred just weeks after a 6.4 magnitude earthquake in the same region on December 20, which killed two people and caused major power disruptions.
Story was adapted from The Guardian.
