California weather live: Flash flood warning in San Francisco after Montecito and Santa Barbara storm evacuations

The next severe front will impact northern California and the Pacific Northwest from Wednesday.

It comes after days of heavy rain which left land waterlogged, adding to the risk of mudslides, particularly in the burn scars of wildfires where land is already destabilized. The heavy rain has also led to rapid water rises in rivers and streams across California and portions of far western Nevada.

The system swamping California is known as an “atmospheric river” – or a “river in the sky” – a band of water vapor that forms over the ocean and can be hundreds of miles wide.

Louise Boyle explains how the phenomenon operates and what it means for California.

More evacuations have been ordered in counties as the storm warning remains in Northern California after torrential downpours.

The Stanislaus County officials have ordered immediate evacuations for some residents in the Newman area of the San Joaquin River and east River Road amid warnings of further rains and high winds.

The California fire department has said the storm on Tuesday was different because ‘it stayed much longer’.

“This storm was different from the standpoint that it was here much longer. It was more intense because of the prior storm, the ground was much more saturated, which led to a lot more flooding and a lot more rescues because of the ground saturation,” said Barry Parker, division chief of the Ventura County Fire Department.

The latest Pacific storm unleashed torrential downpours and damaging winds in California, knocking out power and turning city streets into rivers as mudslides cut off highways and entire communities faced evacuation orders.

More than 33 million Californians were threatened by severe weather throughout the day as “heavy to excessive” rainfall was expected across the state.

The storms have killed at least 17 people since the start of the year, California Governor Gavin Newsom said.

Officials encountered the man’s remains in a stored boat on Tuesday morning, and haven’t determine the cause of death.

Morro Bay was pounded by the atmospheric river that has brought storms across California, killing a woman in nearby Avila Beach on Monday when her car was overtaken by flood waters.

Wildfires tearing through the London suburbs. One-third of Pakistan underwater. Drought-linked famine looming for tens of millions of people in East Africa. Billions of dollars in damage from a “500-year” hurricane that smacked into Florida.

The year 2022 brought disaster after disaster across the planet with scientists increasingly able to point to the climate crisis as the root cause.

Here, The Independent looks back at some of the most erratic and devastating events being driven by humanity’s continued reliance on burning fossil fuels:

With the soil already saturated, much of the damage has been concentrated around the city of Santa Barbara, about 100 miles (160 km) northwest of Los Angeles, where the steep foothills slope toward the Pacific Ocean.

Several remote spots have reported more than a foot (30 cm) of rain including the San Marcos Pass in the Santa Ynez Mountains above Santa Barbara, where more than 17 inches (43 cm) have fallen, according to the NWS.

In the Rancho Oso area of the Santa Ynez Mountains, mud and debris across the roadway isolated about 400 people and 70 horses, the Santa Barbara County Fire Department said on Twitter, posting a photo of a vehicle stuck in the mud. Rescue teams were on the way, spokesperson Scott Safechuck said.

Near the coast, the California Highway Patrol closed U.S. 101, the main highway connecting northern and southern California, with no estimated time on reopening.

San Francisco may be facing strong rains, but that didn’t stop one business owner in the city’s Financial District from spraying an unhoused perrson with a hose on Monday.

In a clip that later went viral locally, the man can be seen saying, “Move,” as he blasts the individual, who sits on the sidewalk wrapped in blankets.

As the San Francisco Standard reports, the city is short thousands of shelter beds needed to house those on its streets as strong rains pelt the Bay Area.

The intense weather has often proved catastrophic on the ground, causing flooding, downed trees, and mudslides that have killed at least 16 people and left roughly 224,000 people in the state without power, the Washington Post reports.

Despite all the destruction it has caused, will the atmospheric river end California’s historic drought, the worst in state history? Not quite, according to scientists.

Read our full report to understand why.