By GODOFREDO VASQUEZ, JANIE HAR and CHRISTOPHER WEBER, Associated Press
FORESTVILLE, Calif. (AP) — A major storm moving through Northern California on Thursday toppled trees and dropped heavy snow and record amounts of rain after damaging homes, killing two people and knocking out power to hundreds of thousands of customers in the Pacific Northwest. Forecasters warned the risk of flash flooding and rockslides would continue. Scores of flights in and out of San Francisco’s airport were canceled.
In Washington, more than 320,000 people — most of them in the Seattle area — were still without power Thursday as crews worked to clear streets of electrical lines, fallen branches and debris. Utility officials said the outages could last into Saturday.
Meanwhile on the East Coast, where rare wildfires have raged, New York and New Jersey welcomed much-needed rain that could ease the fire danger for the rest of the year.
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The National Weather Service extended a flood watch into Saturday for areas north of San Francisco as the region was inundated by the strongest atmospheric river — a long and wide plume of moisture that forms over an ocean and flows through the sky over land — so far this season. The storm system roared ashore Tuesday as a “bomb cyclone,” unleashing winds that brought down trees and left two dead in Washington.
Communities in Washington began opening warming centers offering free internet and device charging. A number of medical clinics remained closed, forcing appointments to be rescheduled.
“I’ve been here since the mid-’80s. I haven’t seen anything like this,” said Trish Bloor, who serves on the city of Issaquah’s Human Resources Commission, as she surveyed damaged homes Thursday.
Up to 16 inches of rain was forecast in southwestern Oregon and the northern counties of California through Friday. The Sonoma County Airport, in wine country north of San Francisco, received 6.92 inches of rain Wednesday, breaking a record dating to 1998.
In nearby Forestville, one person was hurt when a tree fell on a house. Small landslides were reported across California’s North Bay region, including one on State Route 281 on Wednesday that caused a car crash, according to Marc Chenard, a weather service meteorologist.
Rain slowed somewhat but “persistent heavy rain will enter the picture again by Friday morning,” the weather service office in San Francisco said on X. “We are not done!”
Dangerous flash flooding, rockslides and debris flows were possible, especially where hillsides were loosened by recent wildfires, officials warned. Scott Rowe, a hydrologist with the weather service in Sacramento, said so far the ground has been able to absorb the rain in California’s Butte and Tehama counties where the Park Fire burned over the summer.
“It’s not necessarily how much rain falls; it’s how fast the rain falls,” Rowe said Thursday.
Northern Mendocino and southern Humboldt counties received anywhere from 4 to 8 inches of rain in the last 48 hours, and the same amounts were expected over the next 48 hours, California forecasters said Thursday. Wind gusts could top 50 mph.
The storm system, which first hit the Pacific Northwest on Tuesday, reached the status of “ bomb cyclone,” which occurs when a cyclone intensifies rapidly.
A winter storm watch was in place for the northern Sierra Nevada above 3,500 feet, where 15 inches of snow was possible over two days. Wind gusts could top 75 mph in mountain areas, forecasters said.
The storm had already dumped more than a foot of snow along the Cascades by Wednesday evening, according to the weather service. Forecasters warned of blizzard and whiteout conditions and near impossible travel at pass level.
Falling trees struck homes and littered roads across western Washington, killing at least two people. One woman in Lynnwood was killed when a large tree fell on a homeless encampment, while another woman in Bellevue was killed when a tree fell on a home.
More than a dozen schools were closed in the Seattle area Wednesday and some opted to extend those closures through Thursday.
In Enumclaw, east of Seattle, residents were cleaning up after their town clocked the highest winds in the state on Tuesday night: 74 mph.
Resident Sophie Keene said the powerful gusts caused transformers to blow out around town. “Things were exploding, like, everywhere,” Keene told the Seattle Times. “Like the transformers over by the park. One blew big, it looked like fireworks just going off.”
Ben Gibbard, the lead singer of the indie rock bands Death Cab for Cutie and Postal Service, drove from his Seattle neighborhood Thursday morning to the woods of Tiger Mountain to go for his regular weekday run, but there were too many trees blocking the trail.
“We didn’t get hit that hard in the city,” he said. “I just didn’t assume it would be this kind of situation out here. Obviously, you feel the most for people who had their homes partially destroyed by this. My ability to run or not run on the trail pales in comparison to that, but it still is quite a sight to behold.”
In California, there were reports of about 9,000 power outages on Thursday morning, down from more than 20,000 on Wednesday night.
In Northern California, only 50 vehicles per hour were allowed through part of northbound Interstate 5 from 10 miles (16 kilometers) north of Redding to 21 miles south of Yreka due to snow, according to the state’s Department of Transportation.
About 150 flights were delayed and another two dozen were canceled early Thursday at San Francisco International Airport, after hundreds were delayed and dozens were canceled on Wednesday, according to tracking service FlightAware.
The weather service issued a flood watch for parts of southwestern Oregon through Friday evening, while rough winds and seas temporarily halted a ferry route in northwestern Washington between Port Townsend and Coupeville.
Parched areas of the Northeast got a much-needed shot of precipitation Thursday, providing a bit of respite in a region plagued by wildfires and dwindling water supplies. More than 2 inches of rain was expected to fall by Saturday morning in areas north of New York City, with snow mixed in at some higher elevations.
“Any rainfall is going to be significant at this point,” said Brian Ciemnecki, a weather service meteorologist in New York City, where the first drought warning in 22 years was issued this week. “Is it going to break the drought? No, we’re going to need more rain than that.”
Har reported from San Francisco and Weber from Los Angeles. Associated Press journalists contributing to this report are: Hallie Golden and Eugene Johnson in Seattle; Martha Bellisle in Issaquah, Wash.; Sarah Brumfield in Washington D.C.; and Michael Hill in Albany, N.Y.
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