Santa Cruz., More than 60,000 homes and businesses were without power in California early Friday, according to data from the Power Outage company, after a “bomb cyclonic” in the Pacific unleashed strong winds, torrential rains and heavy snowfall since Thursday, which has already left two dead, road closures and the declaration of emergency in the most populous state in the United States.
Utility crews in Northern California worked to restore power after two days of ferocious winds and torrential rain, even as the region braced for another onslaught of stormy weather before the weekend.
Last night, Pacific Gas and Electric Co (PG&E) said it had restored power to more than 400,000 customers. About 55,000 homes were still without power on PG&E territory.
In Sonoma County, Occidental Township Volunteer Fire Department Chief Ronald Lunardi said a 2-year-old boy was killed Wednesday night when a tree fell on a house. The Press Democrat.
In Fairfield, a 19-year-old girl died after her vehicle was washed out on a highway, police said.
It is the latest of several atmospheric rivers – long columns of moisture that stretch out over the Pacific – to hit California. This was a Pineapple Express (concentration of moist air originating in the tropics, sometimes in the vicinity of Hawaii) and was carried toward the west coast of the country by a rotating area of pressure or “bomb cyclone.”
“Another storm system is in the forecast for the weekend with moderate to heavy rain. This could cause additional flooding,” said the National Weather Service, from its headquarters in the city of Sacramento, California.
This phenomenon occurs after the powerful winter storm last December, which left at least 50 dead in several cities in the United States.