This powerful low-pressure system is expected to sweep the Pacific coast of the United States on Wednesday and Thursday, and could generate torrential rains and potentially deadly flooding.
A storm “brutal“, capable of generating torrential rains and potentially deadly floods, will fall on California in the middle of the week, meteorologists warned on Tuesday January 3. This powerful low pressure system is expected to sweep the Pacific coast of the United States on Wednesday and Thursday, and authorities are calling on residents to prepare. “It really is a brutal system and it should be taken seriously“warned the US Weather Service (NWS).
According to the NWS, the storm will spawn “major floods, submerged roads, landslides, falling trees, large power outages, immediate disruption of trade and worst of all, probable loss of life.Hard hit by drought for years, the West Coast has been hit for several weeks by a series of storms, which have caused near-record rainfall in some places.
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Some areas in northern California are still suffering the effects of a powerful storm that swept through on New Year’s Eve, causing landslides and power outages. At least one person has died after being trapped in their car by flooding, authorities said.
Second wettest day in San Francisco history
On December 31, San Francisco recorded the second rainiest day in its history since the launch of this measure, with 14 centimeters of precipitation. On Tuesday, a fine rain had already reached California. Precipitation is expected to intensify significantly on Wednesday and Thursday, with nearly 13 centimeters of rain expected in the state capital, Sacramento. The NWS warned on Twitter against “the risk of widespread flooding and wind damageon San Francisco Bay and the Central California Coast.
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The agency advises residents of threatened areas to prepare a “emergency bag» to be able to evacuate quickly if necessary, and alert on potential mudslides or landslides. The expected rain comes from a “atmospheric rivera narrow band in the atmosphere that carries huge amounts of moisture from the tropics.
These rivers in the sky, which concentrate volumes of water vapor equivalent to the liquid transported by certain large terrestrial rivers, are far from exceptional in winter in California. But the current phenomenon is accompanied by adepression bomb“, a system capable of dropping the pressure suddenly and very quickly, thus generating very violent winds. While these torrential rains are welcome given the drought that has hit the American West for two decades, they are not enough and can prove problematic, according to meteorologists: dry soils have difficulty absorbing a deluge of water and this causes flash floods.