News Desk
ISLAMABAD/SACRAMENTO, CALIFORNIA: The US crucial California state is bracing for more severe weather after a week of torrential rains and devastating winds killed at least 12 people in the last 10 days and knocked out power for hundreds of thousands of homes and businesses.
Weather forecast for California
The National Weather Service has warned that northern and central California were facing a “relentless parade of cyclones” that could last until the middle of the coming week.
At least two overlapping phenomena — a huge airborne stream of dense moisture from the ocean called an atmospheric river and a hurricane-force low-pressure system known as the bomb cyclone — have wreaked devastating flooding and record snowfall in the past week.
The latest storms vividly illustrated the costs of the warmer sea and air temperatures necessaitated by climate change.
California’s Natural Resources Secretary Wade Crowfoot told a news conference that the storms were supercharged by climate change.
The western United States remained in a two-decade drought despite the temporary flood. While climate change had resulted in extreme heat, drought and floods, experts said that the west would need several exceptionally rainy years in a row to refill aquifers and reservoirs.
Weather-related incidents in California killed at least 12 people in the last 10 days, Governor Gavin Newsom told a press conference. Among the victims was a child who was killed by a tree that fell on a mobile home in northern California.
A woman, who lived in a homeless encampment along the Sacramento River, was killed on Saturday night after a raging storm uprooted a tree and a branch fell on her tent.
Joe Costa, the woman’s neighbour in the encampment, told Reuters on Sunday that he had found her barely breathing.
“I started calling on 911 and opened her side of her tent and pulled her out, and she was unresponsive,’ Costa said.
First responders tried to resuscitate the woman before taking her to a hospital, where she was pronounced dead on arrival, according to local news reports.
At a news conference, state officials said some 424,000 California homes and businesses remained without power until Sunday afternoon.
Another severe storm was supposed to hit on Monday and another atmospheric river, the sixth of the current season, was expected later in the week, they said.
“We expect to see the worst of it still ahead of us,” Newsom said.
