California Keeps Getting Whacked By Atmospheric Rivers; Next One To Be The Worst Yet

In this screen grab from a video, a storm surge slams into
Santa Cruz, California over the weekend, causing a lot of 
damage. An even stronger storm and atmospheric river
is hitting California today.

 California is getting blasted again today. This one is even worse than the previous parade of storms. 

Yet another atmospheric river is slamming into central and northern California and will slowly slip southward across the state through tomorrow. 

As far as atmospheric rivers go, the one that started early today and will probably go into tomorrow is even stronger than most of those that strike California during the winter.   It's about the strength you'd expect only once every decade or so.

An atmospheric river this strong would always cause havoc. But since California has already experienced several other of these great gushes of rain and mountain snow in recent weeks, the danger is quite high. The saturated soil can't handle any more heavy rain.

To review, an atmospheric river is a long, skinny ribbon of air with a LOT of moisture.  These things can travel thousands of miles across oceans.  When atmospheric rivers  hit land, as this series has done in California, they unleash huge amounts of rain and snow.

The precipitation comes down at such a fast rate that rivers overflow, landslides develop and mountain highways become hopelessly blocked by snow. 

Northern and central California experienced very heavy rains, damaging winds and coastal flooding Thursday from another atmospheric river  Though the Thursday storm wasn't quite as intense as some forecasts suggested, the flooding was extensive, and tree damage was widespread.

Tragically, the Thursday storm killed a two year old boy when a large tree fell on his family's mobile home in Occidental, California. 

A smaller, but still potent storm added to the flooding and wind damage over the weekend.

So far this winter , the series of storms have killed 12 Californians

Now, California is dealing with an escalation of this super stormy regime. Before this latest storm hit, patches of blue sky appeared over the Bay Area Sunday.  

The National Weather Service office in San Francisco urged people to take advantage of the brief break in the weather to clear storm drains, pack a "to go bag" to quickly evacuate today if necessary, and stock up on food, water, batteries and other necessities before the battering ram of the next atmospheric river would hit early this morning. 

A number of schools in the Bay Area and around Sacramento announced Sunday they would be closed due to the storm.  Parts of vulnerable towns like Wilton have been evacuated. Other evacuations are happening in Sonoma County as the Russian River is expected to flood today. 

Officials are especially worried about areas that experienced big wildfires in the past couple of years. Vegetation that would hold soils and rocks and such in place is mostly gone.

The soil is already saturated to the max, and now some of those burn areas could see five to 10 inches of rain today. Rain could fall at a rate of an inch an hour, which is pretty extreme. 

Meanwhile, the Sierra Nevada mountains above an elevation of 7,000 feet expect another three to six feet of snow from this storm, along with winds gusting to more than 80 mph. 

The "weaker" storm early Sunday felled plenty of trees and power lines around Sacramento, and many residents were still without power as the new, larger storm bore down. 

I'm sure I'll need to pass along updates as the storm fully strikes the West Coast today and tomorrow. 

This stormy nightmare is expected to continue for awhile yet. San Francisco does receive a fair amount of rain during the winter, but there's usually breaks in between the storms. When I looked last night, their forecast either called for definite rain, or rain likely, daily through at least Saturday.

Forecasts into the third week on January suggest the parade of very wet storms smacking California will continue at least into the third week of this month. It's too soon to say exactly how wet those storms might turn out, but the flood risk will certainly continue and spread for the next couple weeks.

VERMONT EFFECTS

As I always say, what smashes into California from the Pacific Ocean doesn't stay in California. 

The storm that hit Thursday is mercifully passed through the southern United States as a weak storm spreading showers and non-severe thunderstorms. This lame storm is moving off the southeastern coast today, and will hit parts of Newfoundland as it intensifies into a pretty good nor'easter tomorrow. This will have no effect on us here in Vermont. 

The same is not true with the big storm hitting California today.  It appears it's going to affect us one way or another here in Vermont. 

I'm pretty sure it won't be nearly as extreme as what California is dealing with. It seems like the lead storm that hit California early Sunday might spread some snow, mixed precipitation or rain our way Thursday. 

The main event for us in Vermont should be Thursday night and Friday.  We also don't know if the storm will be rain, snow, ice, wind or all of the above. Current forecasts are leaning toward a mostly rain scenario for us again, but nobody's absolutely sure.

As always, check for further updates on this one.