(Los Angeles) California is struggling between two storms on Monday: a levee that broke due to major flooding, causing the evacuation of thousands of people, is being repaired but a new storm is announced in this State of the American West.
Homes were flooded and vehicles submerged after the flooding of the Pajaro River, which created a breach in a dike overnight from Friday to Saturday. The firefighters then went door to door to wake up and evacuate the inhabitants.
But by Monday morning, the breach had widened further to measure 100 yards wide, according to officials in Monterey County, south of San Francisco. “Emergency repair work is underway to stabilize it,” according to the county, which so far has not recorded any deaths or injuries in the area.
More than 10,000 people across the county have been called to leave their homes, with the Salinas River also expected to overflow in the coming days.
The most populous state in the country, California experiences a particularly rainy winter. In January in particular, a series of storms caused multiple floods, landslides and falling trees, leading to the death of 20 people.
The current storm is fed, like most others this season, by an “atmospheric river”, a gigantic corridor of rain that carries water vapor stored in the tropics, often around Hawaii.
If the rains have gradually decreased in intensity, they could again fall on the region on Tuesday, with nearly 5 centimeters expected on already saturated soils, and therefore cause new floods.
According to Brooke Bingaman, of the US Weather Service (NWS) in the region, the risks of further flooding are very real. “It is very important that you leave the areas that should be affected,” she urged in a video posted on Twitter.
“Remember, it’s better to spend the night in a weird place than to wake up at home to rising water or realize you’re isolated because the roads around you are cut off,” a- she insisted.
In the surrounding mountains, near-record snowfalls have also been recorded in recent months, resulting in a huge accumulation of snow.
The new rains, from a rather warm depression, could melt part of this exceptional snowpack accumulated over the past three months. What cause runoff potentially impossible to contain for waterways.
On the country’s east coast, New York State is also expecting to receive a considerable amount of snow due to a storm with gusts of up to nearly 100 km / h, which could cause widespread power outages. .
New York State Governor Kathy Hochul declared a state of emergency beginning Monday night, warning at a press conference that the storm could be “deadly” and asking residents, especially those upstate, to prepare for harsh conditions.