Deadly California storm triggers floods, blackouts

LOS ANGELES, California — A deadly Pacific storm, the second "Pineapple Express" weather system to sweep the West Coast in less than a week, dumped torrential rain over Southern California on Monday, triggering street flooding and mudslides throughout the region.

Extreme weather advisories for floods, high wind and winter storm conditions were posted on Monday across parts of California and southwestern Arizona where some 35 million people live, and authorities urged residents to limit their driving.

More than 1 million people statewide were without power.

The National Weather Service, or NWS, documented staggering rainfall amounts from the storm, which lashed Northern California on Sunday with hurricane-force gusts of wind, along with heavy precipitation that intensified as the system moved south on Sunday night and Monday.

The NWS said more than 25 centimeters of rain had fallen since Sunday across the Los Angeles area, the nation's second-largest city, with much more expected before the downpour was due to taper off later in the week.

Nearly 0.3 meters of rain was measured over a 24-hour period on the campus of the University of California at Los Angeles.

"We're talking about one of the wettest storm systems to impact the greater Los Angeles area" since records began, Ariel Cohen, chief NWS meteorologist in LA, told a news conference. "Going back to the 1870s, this is one of the top three."

At least two people were killed by wind-toppled trees on Sunday — an 82-year-old man in the former gold rush town of Yuba City and a 45-year-old man at Boulder Creek in the coastal Santa Cruz Mountains.

US President Joe Biden spoke to California Governor Gavin Newsom and Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass, and pledged to provide federal aid to areas hard hit by the Pacific storm pummeling the state, the White House said.

Intense rainfall

The intense rainfall, with heavy snow in high-elevation mountain areas, was carried to California by a storm system that meteorologists call an atmospheric river, a vast airborne current of dense moisture funneled inland from the Pacific.

The latest tempest, and a less powerful storm that hit California on Wednesday and Thursday, also qualified as a "Pineapple Express", a type of atmospheric river originating from the subtropical waters around Hawaii.

Winds gusting to 121 kilometers per hour on Sunday downed trees and utility lines across the San Francisco Bay Area and California's Central Coast, knocking out power to roughly 875,000 homes at the storm's peak in that region.

A number of upscale communities built on the slopes of Hollywood Hills, Beverly Hills and Topanga Canyon were among the hardest hit by landslides.

Los Angeles officials reported 120 mudslides and debris flows throughout the city on Monday, and at least 25 structures were damaged by heavy rainfall or mudslides as of Monday evening.

Agencies via Xinhua