Northern California is bracing for a second blast from an atmospheric river that is expected to unleash on Wednesday.
The all-time daily precipitation record was set in 1994. In the Bay Area, rivers and streams overflowed their banks and knocked out power to more than 130,000 homes.
The storm would likely be worse with residents still cleaning up. Round two of the atmospheric river will dump more rain on the saturated ground and be accompanied by strong winds that can topple trees.
There are flood watches for the San Francisco Bay Area on Monday.
The National Weather Service said gusts could reach as high as 70 mph from the Bay Area down to the Central Coast.
According to a warning issued for the North Bay, people should avoid being outdoors in forested areas. Stay in the lower levels of your home during the windstorm.
The Bay Area office of the National Weather Service warned on Monday of the risks posed by the storm.
This will be one of the most significant systems on a widespread scale that this meteorologist has seen in a long time. Flooding, roads washing out, hillside collapsing, trees down, immediate disruption to commerce, and the worst of all, likely loss of human life, are some of the impacts that will occur. This is a system that needs to be taken seriously.
The San Francisco Chronicle reported that more than 3 million residents of areas most at risk of storm impacts have been given 3.8 million bags of sand. At 4 a.m., the rain is expected to come back. Continue into Thursday.
Though not at the rate at which it is falling this week, rain is welcome in many parts of California.
"This is going to help a lot with the short-term dry conditions in Northern California, perhaps even erase short-term dry conditions,"UCLA climate scientist Daniel Swain said in a forum with reporters on Tuesday. It's going to take a lot more to completely obviate the longer-term, multi-year impacts, and in the Colorado River Basin context, this isn't really going to do much at all.
Increasing global temperatures due to the burning of fossil fuels have doubled the chances of a mega-flood in California, according to a recent study.
"We're nowhere near that yet, and we're probably not headed there, but this is definitely one of the higher impact wet periods that we've seen in recent years."
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