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LOS ANGELES (news agencies) — Heavy rain flooded California roadways and much-needed snow piled up in the mountains as the first of back-to-back atmospheric rivers pummeled the state Thursday.
The storm focused its energy on the southern and eastern parts of the state after initially hitting the San Francisco Bay Area on Wednesday, where it halted cable car service. The downpours arrived Thursday in Southern California in time to snarl the morning commute.
An atmospheric river, which is a long band of moisture that forms over the Pacific, was fueling the storms dousing the Los Angeles and San Diego areas, said National Weather Service forecaster Bob Oravec.
Atmospheric rivers “typically occur ahead of cold fronts across the Pacific,” he said. “And when they interact with the West Coast topography, you often get some very heavy rain both along the coastal ranges and also inland through the Sierras.”
As sheets of rain fell in San Diego, Ruben Gomez cleaned debris from storm drains in his parents’ neighborhood Thursday.
He piled sandbags around what was left of their home, which was hit hard by flooding from an earlier deluge. Firefighters had to rescue his parents, both 82, from the home after the earlier storm, which filled with water reaching six feet high (2 meters). His father was hospitalized for two days because of hypothermia and his mother for a week after she got water in one of her lungs.
“Every hole in the house, I’ve got plugged with plastic and paper to make sure water doesn’t go up so high again,” he said.
They have no insurance and are relying on donations from family, friends and neighbors. He said he is grateful still because his parents survived and are now safe at his home in an area less prone to flooding.
