A road washed away by the waters. Residents trapped in their car, rescued by rescue… The rupture of a dike on the Pajaro River in California after a new storm in this state caused impressive flooding. Two people died in this disaster and thousands more had to be evacuated.
“We were hoping to avoid it, but the worst case scenario happened with the Pajaro River overflowing and the levee breaking around midnight (Friday-Saturday night),” Luis Alejo, a Monterey County official, tweeted Saturday. located on the coast, in central California.
very rainy winter
On Friday, the director of emergency services for the governor of California, Nancy Ward, announced that the storm had “unfortunately (…) two dead”. These floods were caused by yet another storm that swept through California, already the victim of a particularly rainy winter in recent weeks. Up to 23 centimeters of precipitation were expected in places.
This rain, coming from a rather warm depression, was likely to melt part of the exceptional snowpack accumulated over the past three months. What cause runoff impossible to contain for the rivers of this state in the west of the country. US President Joe Biden on Friday approved a declaration of a state of emergency in California, to facilitate aid from the federal state.
atmospheric river
Many evacuation orders had been issued, particularly in northern California, also affected. This storm is fed, like most others this winter, by an “atmospheric river”, a gigantic corridor of rain that carries water vapor stored in the tropics, often around Hawaii, which earned them the nickname of “Pineapple Express”.
In January, a series of storms caused multiple floods, landslides and falling trees, killing 20 people.