A storm that prompted thousands of evacuations and killed at least 14 continued to batter California on Tuesday, as severe weather rolled in from the Pacific — and more is expected in the days to come.
More than 33 million people remained under threat from “heavy to excessive” rainfall, the National Weather Service, or NWS, said of the "onslaught of atmospheric river events".
More than 151,000 households and businesses were without power on Tuesday afternoon, tracker PowerOutage showed.
"Back-to-back atmospheric river events continue to hammer California and pose flooding threats," the NWS said in its latest forecast on Tuesday.
"Radar showed widespread moderate to heavy rainfall across much of California this afternoon.
"Heavy precipitation will continue for much of California through tonight, and scattered to widespread instances of flash flooding will be possible …"
The torrential rain is expected to continue into the week.
"There will be a brief break in the rainfall in the West late tonight before the next atmospheric river arrives Wednesday," the NWS said.
The NWS in Los Angeles reported record levels of rain on Tuesday at Santa Barbara Airport (10.71cm), Santa Maria Airport (8.68cm), Paso Robles Airport (3cm) and in the city of Sandberg (6.83cm).
“Nearly all of California has seen much above average rainfall totals over the past several weeks,” the NWS said.
In the Rancho Oso area of the Santa Ynez Mountains, mud and debris across the roadway isolated about 400 people and 70 horses, the Santa Barbara County Fire Department said on Twitter.
Near the coast, the California Highway Patrol closed the 101 motorway, the main artery connecting northern and southern California, with no estimated time on reopening.
San Francisco, already soaked from previous rain, had a downpour and even hail under a flash-flood warning.
There were reports of flooding in Los Angeles, including metro stations in the city. Falling boulders and mudslides plagued the posh celebrity enclaves of Malibu and Laurel Canyon.
The storm also caused a large sinkhole in Orange Country that trapped a woman and a young girl in a vehicle on Monday night. The two were rescued by firefighters and are expected to recover from injuries.
Residents of the cities of Santa Monica, Inglewood and Hawthorne were advised on Tuesday morning to seek shelter as 86kph gusts were expected to sweep through the region.
Montecito, the seaside community that is home to Prince Harry and his wife Meghan, and Oprah Winfrey, Ellen DeGeneres and other celebrities, was ordered to evacuate on the fifth anniversary of deadly mudslides there.
Montecito was one of 17 areas in the state that officials said could be threatened by mudslides and other disasters.
A seven-hour search for a missing boy, 5, swept away by floodwaters was called off on Monday night because water levels were too dangerous for divers.
The boy has not yet been declared dead, according to San Luis Obispo County Sheriff’s Office.
The boy’s mother was driving a vehicle that became stranded in floodwaters near Paso Robles, a small inland city.
Although bystanders were able to pull the mother out, the boy was swept out of the vehicle and downstream, probably into a river, officials said.
At least 14 people have been killed in the extreme weather, according to state officials.
The series of storms since the end of December is one of the biggest tests yet for disaster-weary California, which has endured wildfires and extreme heat in recent years, fuelled by global warming.
“California is experiencing coincidentally a drought emergency and a flood emergency,” Department of Water Resources Director Karla Nemeth said on Monday.
Highway 1, the route to the state’s renowned coastal area of Big Sur, was closed after a mudslide, according to the state's Department of Transport. Parts of Highway 101 and Interstate 505 were also shut.
These are just a few of several major thoroughfares and small country roads closed because of flooding, from the state capital Sacramento in the north to Los Angeles-area beach towns in the south.
By Monday afternoon the state had opened a dozen emergency shelters for those told to evacuate, including in Santa Cruz County, about 121km south of San Francisco, where the San Lorenzo River rose 5.4 metres since Sunday.
Levels on the river have peaked but there will be another round of intense rain, said Daniel Swain, a climatologist at the University of California, Los Angeles.
On Sunday, Sacramento County told about 3,300 people in the Central Valley town of Wilton to leave because of the risk of flooding if levies overflow.
Five rivers are being monitored for flooding. These include the Cosumnes River in Sacramento County and the Russian River in Napa and Mendocino counties in Northern California, said Jeremy Arrich, a manager at the Department of Water Resources.
“Several more feet of snow” was expected to pile up in the Sierra Nevada, a mountain range in eastern California, the NWS said. Avalanche warnings have also been posted until Wednesday.
“Any steep slopes could be dangerous,” it added.
The storm is another in a series of atmospheric river events — long streams of moisture that can stretch for thousands of kilometres across the Pacific.
These can deliver as much water as flows through the mouth of the Mississippi when they release rain on California’s mountains.
The storms already have caused more than $1 billion in losses and damages, according to an estimate by AccuWeather.
The latest storms in California follow a costly trend of destructive extreme weather events last year.
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration said each of last year's 18 extreme weather events caused at least $1 billion in damage, totalling more than $165 billionr.
The agency said the disasters had resulted in at least 474 deaths.
