California flooding: More storms forecast for weekend as experts warn heavy rain won’t fix drought

Authorities are still searching for Kyle Doan, a five-year-old who was swept from his mother’s arms on Monday amid rising flood waters in California near the two of Paso Robles.

The boy went missing on Monday, when his mother, Lindsy Doan, was driving the kindergartener to Lillian Larsen Elementary School, where Ms Doan also works as a special education teacher.

Her route took her through the intersection of San Marcos Road and Wellsona Road, near a creek swollen with flood waters, the Los Angeles Times reports. The family said the intersection wasn’t properly marked for nearby hazards, and fast-moving waters swept the Doans’ car into a nearby tree.

Josh Marcus reports from San Francisco.

More details from the National Weather Service below as another impactful system takes aim at the Bay Area on Friday:

Based in San Francisco, The Independent’s Josh Marcus and his family have had three near-misses since the deluge began in California. He writes that not everyone is as lucky as they have been.

The West Coast will continue to be stuck in a stormy pattern through this weekend with two low-pressure systems expected to impact the coast. The first system will linger just offshore over the Pacific through Friday, then gradually dissipate Friday night. The second system will approach early Saturday and move onshore by Saturday night. Both systems will be accompanied by ample moisture and produce widespread precipitation.

The most impactful precipitation will remain focused along the coasts of northern California and the Pacific Northwest through Friday night, and then precipitation will expand south on Saturday and east on Sunday.

Northern California has been hammered with heavy precipitation events over the past couple of weeks, and any additional rainfall could pose a threat of flash flooding. This weekend, precipitation will fall as snow in the higher elevations of the West, and heavy mountain snow will be possible in parts of the Sierra Nevada and Cascades. Heavy mountain snow could also be possible for the higher peaks of the central and southern Rockies.

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.

Read on:

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.

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.

AP

California’s famous desert resort city Palm Springs was hit by heavy winter storm flash flooding that saw at least one trapped motorist rescued from their vehicle.

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.

Graeme Massie reports.

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.

Watch the footage below: