California flooding 2023: Flash floods, sinkholes shut roads with more storms forecast as rain dents drought

Atmospheric rivers pounding California since late last year have coated mountains with a full winter’s worth of snow and begun raising reservoir levels — but experts say it will take much more precipitation to reverse the effects of years of drought.

The US Drought Monitor’s weekly update released on Thursday showed that “extreme” drought has been virtually eliminated a week after the worst category — “exceptional” — was washed off the map. Two weeks ago extreme drought covered 35% of California.

The National Weather Service in Sacramento confirmed on Wednesday that destruction in Calaveras County early on Tuesday morning was caused by a small tornado.

An EF1 tornado occurred at around 4.10am local time, touching down near a small reservoir. Though classified as “weak” still produced 90mph winds and caused “extensive tree damage to white oak and pines trees”, according to a press release from NWS.

The tornado is just one small part of the severe weather that has lashed California for much of this month.

On the same morning as the tornado struck, severe thunderstorms swept through the San Joaquin Valley with winds strong enough to pick up a large horse barn near Oakdale in Stanislaus County and drag it over a five-foot fence. Neighbouring properties had minor roof damage and wind speeds are thought to have peaked at 75mph.

The NWS says that a warning was sent out to residents with a 17-minute lead time advising that straight-line winds and tornadoes were possible from the severe thunderstorms in the area.

Terrifying footage has captured the moment a mother and daughter had to be rescued from a sinkhole in Chatsworth, Los Angeles.

Intense flooding caused a sinkhole to open up on Monday night, swallowing two cars.

A mother and daughter were pulled to safety from an SUV.

During a visit to badly-impacted Santa Cruz county on Tuesday, Governor Gavin Newsom hinted at a link between California’s extreme weather and the climate crisis.

“The dries are getting a lot drier the last three years, and the wets are getting a lot wetter. This weather whiplash — is that the new reality?” he said, according to NBC News.

California has been in a state of “megadrought” for the past two decades, intensified by the impacts of global heating, according to UCLA research last year.

The study also found that it could take several years of high precipitation to overcome the mega-drought.

“It’s extremely unlikely that this drought can be ended in one wet year,” UCLA geographer Park Williams said at the time.

At least 18 people have now died in incidents linked to the extreme weather with the body of a 43-year-old woman discovered in a submerged vehicle in Sonoma County.

The victim Daphne Fontino had made a final desperate 911 call as her car became trapped in the floodwaters one day earlier.

The Sonoma County Sheriff’s Office said that search and rescue teams made the grim discovery along the 6000 block of Trenton-Healdsburg Road, Forestville, on Wednesday morning.

“Our deepest condolences to her family and friends,” the department said in a statement.

As an intense series of storms continues to hammer California, sinkholes have become a major problem. Here’s one that opened up in Orcutt, California.

The Palm Springs Fire Department carried out the swift water rescue after flooding in a desert wash in the city. A wash is an area in the desert where water once flowed or that floods during heavy rain or flash flooding.

The rescue began at around 5.45pm on Tuesday evening and took around an hour, according to officials.

California was in a lull between storms on Thursday, but more precipitation was expected to arrive on Friday and continue through the weekend. Flooding remained a concern, especially along the Salinas River in Monterey County, because so much rain has fallen.

Downtown San Francisco, for example, received nearly 13.6 inches (34.5 centimetres) of rain from Dec. 26 to Jan. 10. Snowfall so far this season at the summit of the Mammoth Mountain resort in the Eastern Sierra hit 444 inches (11.3 metres).

In the Sierra Nevada and other mountains, the water content of the snowpack is more than 200 per cent of normal to date and more than 100 per cent of the 1 April average, when it is historically at its peak, according to the state Department of Water Resources.

“The automated sensors are registering what they would consider a full seasonal snowpack, about what we would expect on April 1,” state climatologist Michael Anderson told reporters this week.

The snowpack supplies roughly a third of California’s water when it melts and runs off into rivers and reservoirs.

Locally, some reservoirs have seen significant rises in water levels but there are still significant deficits to overcome.

Statewide, reservoir storage is only 82 per cent of average for this time of year. The largest reservoir, Shasta, is at just 44 per cent of capacity. That’s only 70 per cent of the average to date. The huge Oroville reservoir is closer to its average but at just 49 per cent of capacity.

And there’s concern that the rains could abruptly stop. The end of 2021 was marked by significant storms, but the start of 2022 saw months of bone-dry weather.

There are some hints of a drier pattern developing around 20 January, said Daniel Swain, a climate scientist at the University of California, Los Angeles, during an online briefing this week.

At least 18 people have now died in incidents linked to the extreme weather in California, according to authorities.

Among the victims is a 43-year-old woman who was discovered in a submerged vehicle in Sonoma County on Wednesday.

In total, more lives have now been lost in the storms than in the past two years of wildfires in California.

Atmospheric rivers pounding California since late last year have coated mountains with a full winter’s worth of snow and begun raising reservoir levels — but experts say it will take much more precipitation to reverse the effects of years of drought.

The US Drought Monitor’s weekly update released on Thursday showed that “extreme” drought has been virtually eliminated a week after the worst category — “exceptional” — was washed off the map. Two weeks ago extreme drought covered 35% of California.