California has faced severe and deadly weather for days, with at least six people dead since New Year’s weekend, including a young child who died after a redwood tree fell, crushing a mobile home in the north of the state.
The county coroner’s office Monday identified two people who died in what appeared to be storm-related deaths in Sacramento County over the weekend. Both Rebekah Rohde, 40, and Steven Sorensen, 61, were found inside tents at separate homeless encampments, and a tree branch fell on both tents, the coroner’s office said. The cause of death of both was still pending examination.
Nearly all of California has seen above-average rainfall totals in recent weeks, with totals 400-600% above average values, according to the National Weather Service.
Climate change has made extreme precipitation in California twice as likely, and extreme weather is forecast to generate 200% to 400% of surface runoff, rainwater that cannot be absorbed into the ground, for agricultural purposes. century, according to research conducted by the University of California at Los Angeles environment and sustainability department
Recent severe weather prompted Governor Gavin Newsom to declare a state of emergency last week, allowing local jurisdictions and state agencies to respond to changing weather more quickly, while President Joe Biden issued a emergency declaration late Sunday night to support the response to the storm.
‘Huge cyclone’ to hit Wednesday
While Tuesday’s storm system was expected to move inland overnight, bringing widespread mountainous snowfall across the Great Basin, a «massive cyclone forming off the coast of the North American continent will bring another atmospheric river toward the west coast, this time impacting areas farther north from northern California north to the Pacific Northwest coast» on Wednesday, the National Weather Service said.
«When all is said and done, precipitation totals over the next several days will be in the range of 3 to 7 inches across the Transverse Range of southern California, north along the Central Coast Ranges and Northern California and through the Sierra,» he said.
The weather service warned that significant and widespread flooding was likely across large stretches of California to western Nevada.
