California has faced deadly severe weather for days, with at least six people having died since New Year’s weekend, including a toddler who was killed after a redwood tree fell, crushing a mobile home in the state’s north.
Two people killed in what appeared to be storm-related deaths in Sacramento County over the weekend were identified by the county’s coroner’s office on Monday. Both Rebekah Rohde, 40, and Steven Sorensen, 61, were found inside tents at separate homeless encampments, with a tree branch having fallen on both tents, the coroner’s office said. The cause of death for both was still pending examination.
Nearly all of California has seen higher than average rainfall totals over the past several 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, with extreme weather predicted to generate 200% to 400% of surface runoff, rainwater that cannot be absorbed by soil, by the end of the century, according to research by the UCLA environment and sustainability department.
The recent severe weather prompted Gov. Gavin Newsom to declare a state of emergency last week, allowing local jurisdictions and state agencies to respond to the changing weather more quickly, while President Joe Biden issued an emergency declaration late Sunday evening to support the storm response.
‘Enormous cyclone’ to strike Wednesday
While Tuesday’s storm system was expected to push inland in the evening, bringing widespread mountain snows across the Great Basin, an “enormous cyclone forming well off the coast of the North American continent will bring yet another Atmospheric River toward the West Coast — this time impacting areas further north from northern California northward up the coast of the Pacific Northwest” on Wednesday, the National Weather Service said.
“When all is said and done, precipitation totals over the next few days will be in the 3-7 inch range through the Transverse Range of southern California, northward along the central to northern California coast ranges and through the Sierra,” it said.
The weather service warned that widespread considerable flood impacts were likely across large swathes of California into western Nevada.
