A powerful winter storm battered California threatened to bring floods, blizzards and avalanches Saturday as frigid temperatures added to the mix of misery.
Low temperatures overnight could dip below freezing in some areas while downtown San Francisco could see record cold temperatures Saturday morning, according to the National Weather Service. The weather service said the forecast temperature of 38 degrees Fahrenheit (3 degrees Celsius) would mark the coldest in the city since 2009.
Flash flood warnings were issued from Friday through early Saturday morning for Los Angeles and Ventura counties, an area of about 6 million people. The weather service said flash flooding occurred late Friday in Ventura County, with up to 7 inches (18 cm) of rain falling and up to 10 inches (25.4 cm) possible before the storm turned into a storm. Showers on Saturday afternoon.
In Los Angeles County, meteorologists said life-threatening flash flooding was possible near creeks, streams, urban areas, highways, and areas burned by wildfires. The threat area included downtown Los Angeles, Hollywood, Beverly Hills, and several suburbs.
“Shallow landslides and mudslides are expected,” the meteorological service said.
John Loescher/AP
Despite the heavy rain, no serious problems were immediately reported.
Rain falling at a rate of about an inch per hour raised fears of floods or mudslides. Evacuation warnings have been issued for some burn-affected areas and for a mile stretch of Oshino, which is on the central coast near a dam that overflowed during storms last month. Residents have been urged to prepare to flee at short notice.
Meanwhile, people farther east were struggling to deal with the aftermath of storms earlier this week.
More than half a million people in Michigan were left without power late Friday night, days after one of the worst ice storms in decades caused widespread power outages by destroying about 3,000 ice-encased power lines.
Promises of restoring power by Sunday, when low temperatures were expected to once again climb above zero (below 18C), were of little consolation.
“It’s four days without electricity in such weather,” said Apoorva Gokhale, of Walid Lake, Michigan. “Unimaginable.”
Back in California, the National Weather Service’s Weather Prediction Center predicted heavy snowfall over the Cascade Mountains and Sierra Nevada this weekend.
California’s wine country hasn’t been immune to the rare wind and snow brew. Mark Neal told KPIX-TV that he woke up Friday morning to see a foot (30.4 cm) of snow—more than he’d seen in over 40 years—and dozens of his oak trees snapped in half.
“It’s pretty much a battlefield if you look at it. Some of them are over 200 years old,” he said. Fortunately, the vines were safely asleep.
A low-pressure system pushing the atmospheric river away from the Pacific Ocean into central and southern California on Friday was driving inland and is expected to bring widespread rain and snow into southern Nevada by Saturday afternoon and then through northwestern Arizona Saturday night and Sunday morning, it said. National Weather Service office in Las Vegas.
An avalanche warning has been issued for the Sierra Nevada hinterland around Lake Tahoe, which straddles the California-Nevada border. The weather service said about 2 feet (61 cm) of new snow fell by Friday and another 5 feet (1.5 m) is expected when another storm moves in with the potential for strong winds and gusts Sunday. .
In Arizona, the heaviest snow was expected late Saturday through midday Sunday, with up to a foot of new snow likely in Flagstaff, meteorologists said.
Snow was also forecast for the weekend in parts of the upper Midwest to the Northeast, with pockets of freezing rain over some areas of the central Appalachians. The storm is expected to reach the central high plains on Sunday evening.
Hung T.Vu / AP
However, the cold weather that hit the north and west spared the southern states, resulting in extreme temperature differences. The high temperature in the US on Friday was 93 degrees Fahrenheit (34 degrees Celsius) in Falcon Lake, Texas, while the low was under -35 degrees Fahrenheit (1.7 degrees Celsius) near Huntley, Montana.
Winter eruptions have canceled hundreds of flights at airports across the country and closed miles of major highways in several states.
In California, some motorists were trapped overnight on snowy, icy State Route 17, a major thoroughfare in the mountains of the San Francisco Bay Area, before it reopened Friday morning.
Interstate 5, the West Coast’s main north-south highway, was closed south of the Oregon border as snow fell on the floor of the Sacramento Valley. Grapevine, a high mountain pass north of Los Angeles, has been closed for more than 12 hours. After reopening on Friday night, traffic crept under police guard and there was a chance of further closures as forecasters predicted strong winds that would lead to a blizzard in the mountain ranges and passes.
A large portion of a long stretch of Interstate 80 remained closed for most of Friday over the crest of the Sierra Nevada mountain range between Sacramento, California, and Reno, Nevada.
Severe weather prompted Los Angeles County to keep emergency shelters open through March as cold winds are expected to drop weekend temperatures below freezing in the San Fernando and San Gabriel Valleys. The county’s homeless population was at particular risk.
At least three people died in the storms from coast to coast. A Michigan firefighter died Wednesday after coming into contact with a downed power line, while a pedestrian died in Rochester, Minnesota, after being struck by one of the city-operated snowplows. Authorities in Portland, Oregon, said one person died of hypothermia.
Much of Portland was closed to icy roads that weren’t expected to melt until Saturday after the city’s second-largest snowfall on record this week: about 11 inches (28 centimeters).
Tim Varner sat with blankets in a storefront entryway in Portland to protect him from some wind, ice and snow. Local officials opened six overnight shelters, but the 57-year-old, who has been homeless for two decades, said it was very difficult to push his shopping cart containing his belongings to get to one.
“It’s impossible,” he said. “Snow builds up on your cart wheels, and then you find slippery spots and you can’t get any traction. So you’re stuck.”
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