California faces a “life-threatening” storm this week that began Saturday, will intensify Sunday through Monday, and will continue to dump rain over the Golden State sporadically through Friday.
The Los Angeles Times reported Saturday:
“We continue to see a high risk for life-threatening and damaging flooding across the region, as well as large waves and coastal flooding for many coastal areas,” Robbie Munroe, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Los Angeles, said during a webinar Saturday.
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Weather officials are expecting 3 to 6 inches of rain across Southern California’s coasts and valleys and 6 to 12 inches in mountains and foothills. Many places, including urban areas, are expected to see rainfall totals on the high end of that range; Munroe described this as “very concerning” because the ground is still moist from Thursday’s atmospheric river storm.
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There’s also the potential for lightning across a wide swath of the state from Lake Tahoe to Mendocino to downtown L.A.. “That is not typical for this part of the world,” he said.
The San Francisco Chronicle called the impending storm “rare” and “extreme”:
Effects of the storm began to arrive Saturday afternoon, and the National Weather Service expected it to increase in intensity later in the evening and into Sunday. Officials in San Jose declared a state of emergency Saturday night, warning of potentially widespread flooding and urging people to get to higher ground.
The storm is pulling in a deep plume of moisture from the tropics, known as an atmospheric river. The tropical component of the storm will lead to a localized tornado threat on the coast Sunday, downpours throughout the Bay Area and potentially damaging wind gusts. Coastal areas could experience gusts up to 70 mph throughout the day Sunday, and inland areas could gust up to 60 mph, especially in the afternoon. Higher elevations, along the coast, such as Mount Tamalpais, could gust even higher.
…Forecasters warned of hurricane force winds early Sunday morning as the storm lashes California’s central coast.
The storm system is considered the first major storm of a winter whose weather conditions are affected by El Niño, a periodic warming of the eastern Pacific. California had record-breaking snowfall last winter, but was relatively dry this season until now.
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