California Braces for Another Storm as Current Storm Weakens

The storm that hit California has begun to wind down, leaving behind power outages, flood threats and road closures. Another drenching is expected to hit the state soon.

Bob Oravec, senior branch forecaster at the US Weather Prediction Center, said in an interview that the rain is not over yet. Northern California will see more rain tomorrow, followed by a big rain event on Monday and Tuesday.

The latest storm has brought strong winds to Alpine Meadows, California, with gusts reaching up to 132 miles (212 kilometers) per hour. This has led to some evacuations in Contra Costa and Santa Cruz counties, outside of San Francisco. Waves off the California coast are still reaching above 30 feet, according to the National Data Buoy Center, and are topping 13 feet near the entrance of San Francisco Bay.

Oravec said that the system has reached its peak intensity and is now slowly weakening.

The aftermath of the storm left more than 180,000 homes and businesses without power, according to poweroutage.us. Highway 1 on the scenic Big Sur coast remains closed in several spots because of downed trees and flooding, according to the state’s transportation department.

A child was killed in Sonoma County when a tree fell on a house, the Associated Press reports.

While California is experiencing a severe drought, the state has been hit by a series of storms that have brought more water than some areas can handle. The storms are refilling depleted reservoirs and boosting the state’s mountain snowpack, but they’re also causing chaos on roads, raising risks from flooding and mudslides and endangering lives.

Oravec said that the latest storm is part of a pattern that could continue through the end of the month. Long-range forecast models show that there won’t be much of a change to larger weather patterns until the end of January, which will keep most of the US relatively mild.

According to the National Weather Service, high wind warnings and advisories stretch unbroken from southern Oregon to the border with Mexico. The Weather Prediction Center has forecast that more than 5 inches of rain could fall across a large part of California in the coming week, with some areas seeing more than 10 inches.

Oravec noted that there is a never-ending stream of systems.