The Midwestern Atmospheric River Tornado: Weather Forecasts for the High Plains and Upper Midwest Through Tuesday and Thursday. Power Outages in the Central Valley

Atmospheric rivers are a normal part of the West Coast’s weather pattern, and they’re often the solution to months of warm-weather drought, bringing sorely needed rain and snowfall that packs water away high in the mountains.

A major winter storm will make its way across the High Plains and Upper Midwest by late Tuesday night and continue for most of Wednesday.

On Wednesday, the atmospheric river could bring 2 to 3 inches of rain in California’s Central Valley, with 3 to 6 inches in the foothills and mountains, the NWS office in Sacramento said. A low-level jet stream will bring gusts of 35-50 mph in the valley and foothills and 60 mph in the mountains.

A cold front could cause wind speeds to be as high as 50 mph in California. As of Wednesday morning, more than 119,000 homes and businesses were without power in parts of the state’s Central Valley.

Snow totals between 6 and 12 inches are forecast from central Pennsylvania north into interior Upstate New York, with up to 2 feet at areas with higher elevations, through Saturday.

Slick roadways and near-whiteout conditions will make travel very difficult if not impossible at times for some of these areas. There is also the possibility of power outages due to very strong winds.

Matthew Elliott is a senior scientist at the Storm Prediction Center, he told CNN that tornadoes can be found in December in the South and the Mississippi Valley in the fall and winter.

There is a marginal risk of severe storms that extends from northern Texas to western Illinois. A brief tornado is one of the main threats.

As the event approaches, details regarding the areas most at risk from tornadoes will become clearer.

Snowfall of Mammoth Mountain and San Francisco, Calif., and Northern California, during a December 26 Decay with the National Weather Service

Since December 26, San Francisco received more than 10 inches (25 centimeters) of rain, while Mammoth Mountain, a popular ski area in the Eastern Sierra, received nearly 10 feet (3 meters) of snow, the National Weather Service reported.

A winter storm warning was in effect through 4 a.m. Sunday for much of the Sierra, including the highest elevations around Lake Tahoe where more than a foot of snow was expected near the shores at an elevation of about 6,200 feet (1,889 meters) and up to 5 feet (1.5 meters) above 8,000 feet (2,438 meters) with winds gusting up to 100 mph (160 kph) over ridgetops.

“This amount of snow will result in the passes needing to be closed for a period of time which will impact traffic getting to and from Los Angeles,” The National Weather Service office in Hanford, California said.

MarkDeutschendorf, a forecaster at the National Weather Service in Reno, stated that the winter snowpack is more than twice what he would have expected.

It looks like Christmas out here. It was stuck to everything and didn’t come with a lot of wind. It’s like a picture postcard.”

While he noted the snow totals so far are impressive, Deutschendorf said he is “cautiously optimistic” about this precipitation putting a big dent in the state’s drought.

“We’re Buried,” the Palisades Tahoe Ski Resort wrote on its website Sunday, sharing photos of thick snow covering the ski resort in Olympic Valley, California.

This is a storm that you will remember for a long time. We’ve now received 7.5 feet of snow since December 1st. The 6th largest snowfall total in 24 hours is what we received during the weekend, with more than 35 inches of snow.

The storm system will bring between 1 to 2 inches of heavy rain to major cities in the area, including New York and Boston.

The First Winter Storm of the Great Smokes in Tentative Upper Mid-Atlantic and South Carolina During the 18th and 19th Annual Winter Flirts

“This is a life-threatening dangerous event,” Hochul said Friday afternoon at a news conference in Albany. Protect yourselves, keep your families safe. Don’t travel until the roads reopen, you know it’s safe.

“We urge everyone in the impacted regions to avoid unnecessary travel tonight and tomorrow,” Hochul said in a Thursday statement. “Work from home if possible, stay off the roads, and make sure you and your loved ones remain vigilant.”

In neighboring Pennsylvania, state transportation officials implored drivers to avoid unnecessary travel due to the low visibility caused by wind and heavy snow.

A massive cold weather system brought record-breaking cold, gusty winds and dangerous precipitation to most of the US on a day when millions of Americans were expected to travel for the winter holidays.

The storm inflicted a slew of tornadoes in the South and blizzard conditions in the Upper Midwest, leaving about 100,000 homes and businesses in the dark across Minnesota, Wisconsin, West Virginia and Virginia as well as Pennsylvania of early Friday, according to Poweroutage.us.

Dozens of tornadoes were reported across multiple states since Tuesday. There were three deaths due to the storms in Louisiana.

And in parts of the Mid-Atlantic, the storm brought a quarter inch of ice was reported Thursday morning to the Appalachian Mountains of West Virginia and Maryland, and about a tenth of an inch had built up in parts of Virginia.

Powerful winds whirled by blizzard conditions knocked down power lines in the Upper Midwest as temperatures in some areas plummeted to near or below freezing, leaving thousands without proper heating.

The First Day of the Fourth Month of February: Loss of Power, Power, and Electricity in the U.S. After a Strong Arctic Front

Meanwhile in Louisiana, Yoshiko A. Smith, 30, and her 8-year-old son, Nikolus Little, were killed Tuesday when a tornado struck Caddo Parish and destroyed their home, local officials said.

Another tornado in northern Louisiana traveled through the town of Farmerville was rated an EF-3, with 140 mph winds, according to the National Weather Service. The tornado destroyed part of an apartment complex and a mobile home park, causing 20 injuries, according to a police detective.

The latest bulletin from the National Weather Service (NWS) names the cause as a “strong arctic high pressure system,” which swept down from Canada on Tuesday and appears poised to march towards the Southeast on Wednesday and Thursday, leaving a wake of life-threatening weather systems across 17 states.

“Nearly (the) entire population of California will be able to see snow from some vantage point later this week if they look in the right direction,” according to Daniel Swain, a climate scientist at the University of California, Los Angeles. “Snow remains very unlikely in California’s major cities, but it’ll fall quite nearby.”

The incoming arctic front will then cross over the northern Rockies, Great Basin and Northern Plains regions, sending temperatures plummeting as low as minus 30 degrees and winds gusting as fast as 60 mph.

Many will experience a cold holiday unlike any other: Atlanta, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh and Tallahassee, Florida, are all forecast to have their coldest high temperature ever recorded on December 24, according to the National Weather Service.

By Thursday afternoon, more than 2,100 flights had been canceled and 6,000 more were delayed, according to the flight tracking website FlightAware.

According to the website Power Outage, 1.2 million customers in the United States are without power because of the winter weather. The US. New York, Virginia, Pennsylvania and Maine all have some kind of electrical problem.

Frostbite is another risk for those trying to brave the cold, the NWS says. In some parts of the U.S. this week, the cold could cause skin damage in as little as 10 minutes.

Those venturing outdoors should cover their skin and change into dry clothing as soon as possible. Staying indoors is the best prevention, according to experts.

More than two million people are under a blizzard warning in some parts of Wyoming, Minnesota, Wisconsin and the Dakotas.

“This is really a very serious weather alert here,” said President Biden, speaking to reporters Thursday morning in front of a national map of wind chill forecasts. “This is not like a snow day when you were a kid. This is serious stuff.”

Georgia and North Carolina have enacted emergency measures to deal with the storm. Declarations of a state of emergency in several states have included the activation of National Guard units.

In Texas, where a 2021 winter storm overwhelmed the state’s power grid and ultimately killed more than 200 people, officials said they expected the grid would hold up as forecasts called for cold weather but little precipitation.

“The grid is ready and reliable,” said Peter Lake, chairman of the state’s Public Utility Commission, in a Wednesday news conference. “We expect to have sufficient generation to meet demand throughout this entire winter weather event.”

Nowhere for The Crowd: How Many Can You Go? A City in Kansas City Destroyed by Snow and the Low-Temperature Limit?

The temperature of minus 24 degrees was the lowest recorded since 1990 at Denver International Airport. More than 500 flights have been canceled at the airport so far Thursday. Nearly 480 more were delayed.

The city’s major airports, O’Hare and Midway, serve as hubs for major airlines and crews were working around the clock to keep flights moving.

More than 350 pieces of snow removal equipment, more than 350,000 gallons of liquid deicer, and more than 5,000 tons of salt will be at the fingertips of these hard-working individuals.

Hundreds of miles away in Kansas City, the winter weather brought only an inch or two of snow. But temperatures were expected to remain below freezing for days, putting a strain on the city’s homeless services.

Several area shelters had added beds this week; still, many reported being at or near capacity. Instead, some people sought shelter on the city’s streetcar, which was operating Thursday after crews had worked from 4 a.m. to clear the route and platforms.

“The library is closed. So it’s only this or the bus, or you go into a parking garage, but you’ll probably get kicked out,” said Pete, who said he did not have a permanent place to live and declined to give his last name to KCUR. “There’s not much you can do.”

Source: https://www.npr.org/2022/12/22/1144970060/winter-storm-holiday-travel

The Midwestern Synopsis of the Super Snow and the Deaths of a Two-Dimensional Autopyne in Kansas City

The sun was out in Montana as the snow moved to the Midwest. According to forecasts the temperature won’t warm up until the weekend.

“We’re very hardy here,” said Lisa Carter, who operates a snowmobile rental business in West Yellowstone. We deal with cold like that all the time. We’re used to it and won’t be doing anything different. We don’t go outside.

Hank Willemsma, a rancher near Dillon, where Thursday’s high temperature was expected to reach minus 13 degrees, said he’d be working through the cold to keep hay out for his cattle.

This report was done with reporting from Bruce Konviser, WPLN’s Pflager and Farmer, NPR’s Mary Louise Kelly, David scaper and the Associated Press.

All modes of travel – planes, trains and automobiles – were being disrupted: There were hundreds of miles of road closures and flight cancellations were growing rapidly. Parts of the Long Beach branch had to be temporarily shut down because of flooding on the Long Island Rail Road.

Mick said that Christmas is canceled because of the weather conditions that are expected to last through Sunday morning. Everyone agreed that it was safer this way.

Governor Andy Beshear said there were three deaths in Kentucky due to the storm, two of them in car crashes. The autopsy would determine the cause of death after the man’s body was found with no obvious signs of trauma.

The Kansas City Police Department stated that a person died in Kansas City after losing control of their car on an icy road. “The Dodge went down the embankment, over the cement retaining wall and landed upside down, submerged in Brush Creek,” police said in a statement.

The Koch Sink Storm: A Super-Energy Storm and a Big Crunch in the Outskirts of the Midwest

“I called it a kitchen sink storm because it is throwing everything at us but the kitchen sink,” Hochul said at a press conference Friday afternoon. Mother nature could not have made a worse weekend for us with everything that happened.

The storm was living up to the warnings at Brian Trzeciak’s home. zero visibility was reported by the airport just after noon on Friday.

“My mother lives about 30 minutes away and so does my sister and her family, in the other direction,” he said. We don’t get together for Christmas Eve and Christmas but we’re staying put until Monday.

As it treks east across the country, the storm is expected to become a “bomb cyclone,” a rapidly strengthening storm which drops 24 millibars of pressure within 24 hours. The storm was expected to have the same pressure as a Category 2 storm as it moved into the Great Lakes.

Airports across the Midwest, including in Minneapolis, Chicago, Milwaukee and Detroit have faced a plethora of cancellations. On Wednesday, an additional 5,200 flights were delayed or canceled. Thursday brought more of the same — more than 1,700 flights were canceled and almost 10,000 delayed as of Thursday morning, according to FlightAware.

Icy and Cold Conditions are Expected to Keep the Northeastern U.S. Warm, Low, and Mid-Atlantic

• It will remain very cold: Friday will bring record-low temperatures in large swaths of the US, including from the Lower Mississippi Valley, northeastward into the Tennessee and Ohio Valleys and stretching across large sections of the east from the Southeast, through the Southern to Central Appalachians and into the mid-Atlantic, according to the National Weather Service.

• Whiteout conditions: Blizzard conditions may exist even if snowfall stops, because high winds can pick up snow already on the ground and cause low visibility.

The runways at Seattle-Tacoma Airport were closed due to the icy conditions, with nearly half of flights canceled. Further, all express services for Sound Transit, a regional transportation network in the Seattle metro area, were suspended Friday due to the icy conditions.

A winter storm warning is also in effect for northeastern Oregon, including Portland, from 4 p.m. to 10 p.m. PST. Total snow and sleet accumulations of up to one inch and ice accumulations of .2 to .4 inches is likely as well as winds gusting to 55 mph. Wind chills as low as zero are possible, and frostbite is possible on exposed skin in as little as 30 minutes.

The National Weather Service Weather Prediction Center said weekend “temperatures will be 25 to 35 degrees below average from east of the Rockies to the Appalachians.”

At least six people have been killed in vehicle crashes, and at least four have been killed in a pile up on the Ohio Toll Road, according to reports.

The Tennessee Valley Authority’s Electric Power Outage Issue in the Afterglow of the Mid-Individual Hurricane Irregular

Wind chills as the front hit were minus 20 degrees in some parts of the South and gusts knocked out power to thousands of homes in Kentucky. Emergency responders asked people in the region to stay home if possible.

Meanwhile, WPLN’s Paige Pfleger reported that plunging temperatures are putting pressure on a power grid not accustomed to this cold, and that the Tennessee Valley Authority has asked local utilities to cut their electricity use. The power load in Nashville will cause outages for 10 minutes every few hours.

The task of restoring power in this weather is a significant challenge, according to ScottAaronson, vice president of security and preparedness.

Accessing these areas can be very difficult, especially when there are downed power lines and trees. Crews cannot go up in bucket trucks if the wind is higher than 35 miles an hour,” Aaronson said. “It makes it difficult for crews to get there and get the power back on, because of those things.”

Heavy rains and high winds battered New Jersey, causing power lines to fall and flooding the coast as high as 9 feet. Interior locations along the Hudson River also flooded.

“So that, unfortunately, really affects anyone who’s got a connecting flight, and we’re going to see a lot of people missing connecting flights with these long delay times,” Bangs said.

Power Outage in the Sierra Nevada: New Year’s Day Rains, Showers, and Predictions for New York City, Washington, and Los Angeles

The storm knocked out power to more than 300,000 homes and businesses across California and Nevada as of early Sunday, according to Poweroutage. There are people in the US.

The trees that are weakened in Portland by the weather extremes of the last few years are in danger of being knocked down.

“The consecutive dry summers that we’ve had, especially the heat events like the heat dome, that really damages trees and it takes up so much of their energy to fuel their immune systems to fight off pathogens,” Bourgeois said.

San Francisco’s downtown NWS site recorded 5.46 inches of rain on Dec. 31 — the second-wettest day at that location in more than 170 years, the NWS said.

The foothills of the Sierra Nevada Mountains, as well as southern Oregon and the parts of the Bay Area and Los Angeles County are at greatest risk for flash-flooding.

The National Weather Service in Los Angeles has said goodbye to the warmth. “Big drop in temperatures on track between today and tomorrow (Tuesday). Expect 15-20 degrees of cooling due to the storm system.

New Year’s Eve celebrations in New York City and Washington, DC are likely to be disrupted. The city of Los Angeles is expected to be wet on New Year’s.

Parts of the state remained under flash flood warnings Monday morning, after a weather phenomenon known as an atmospheric river dropped historic rain levels on San Francisco, Oakland and other areas. Predicted to arrive soon, a second atmospheric river will be as bad or worse than the New Year’s Eve deluge.

Rain chances for New York City will increase through Saturday, with the heaviest rainfall expected between 7 p.m. and 1 a.m. Sunday. Temperatures will be near 50 through most of the afternoon into Sunday.

The Weather Prediction Center stated that the slight risk area shows places that are already high in soil and burn scars.

Colorado Roads Closed Due to Heavy Snow, Wet Soil and River Flooding after a 9-Hour Interstate-70 Closure

An eastbound stretch of Interstate-70 in Colorado reopened Thursday after a nine-hour closure left drivers stranded amid bouts of heavy mountain snow, widespread rain and gusty winds.

A 4-year-old girl was among the five people who died in Oregon after trees fell on passing vehicles, state police said.

The weather service said there will be an increased risk for rock/mudslides in the local mountains and canyon roads due to the heavy rain and wet soils.

The San Francisco Bay Area and Mendocino County, as well as the Mendocino National Forest, were closed due to landslides.

According to the National Weather Service’s office, roads inHumboldt County began to flood from the earthquake. The Eel river may cause the bridge to be closed again if it gets too high.

Sacramento’s fire officials planned to broadcast evacuation announcements from a helicopter and a boat along the American River — a spot where many unhoused people live in encampments — to warn of flooding.

The weather service in Reno warned that strong winds could cause tree damage and cause power outages, among other things.

The NWS advised residents to stay put on Saturday because of the flooding that continues as the rain continues with too many road closings to count.

Moderate flooding could affect some people at Susanville, California, when the Susan River is expected to rise to 30 centimeters above the flood stage by Saturday morning.

The Second-Wetest Day of the 1994 California Winter Storm: Sacramento Public Works, U.S. 101, and Los Alamos

“However, in the past three months, Oregon has been slightly drier than normal and California has been slightly wetter than normal (the opposite of what is expected),” Arcodia told CNN. There are always additional factors that can impact the weather in the West Coast, like El Nio and La Nia.

A Sacramento Municipal Utility District online map showed more than 153,000 customers were affected by power outages on Saturday. The utility said in a message that crews were working to get power back after the powerful winter storm.

At one point Saturday, officials ordered residents in Wilton – roughly 20 miles from Sacramento – to leave the area immediately, warning that rising water may spill over onto roadways and cut off access to leave the area. The residents of Wilton were told to shelter in place after the roads were rendered useless by water.

Rainfall in downtown San Francisco on Saturday topped 5 inches (12.7 centimeters) at midafternoon, making it the second-wettest day on record, behind a November 1994 deluge. With rain continuing to fall, it could threaten the nearly three-decade old record.

The California Highway Patrol said a section of U.S. 101 — one of the state’s main traffic arteries — was closed indefinitely south of San Francisco because of flooding. Videos on Twitter showed mud-colored water streaming along San Francisco streets, and a staircase in Oakland turned into a veritable waterfall by heavy rains.

Weather service meteorologist Courtney Carpenter said the storm could drop over an inch of rain in the Sacramento area before moving south. One ski resort south of Lake Tahoe closed chair lifts because of flooding and operational problems, and posted a photo on Twitter showing one lift tower and its empty chairs surrounded by water.

The Sacramento agency released a map of 24-hour precipitation through Saturday morning, showing a wide range of totals in the region, from less than an inch (2.54 centimeters) in some areas to more than 5 inches (12.7 centimeters) in the Sierra foothills.

The Stockton Fire Department Destroyed a Car and Underwent a Flood on New Year’s Eve in Sacramento, California

The Stockton Police Department posted photos of a flooded railroad underpass and a car that appeared stalled in more than a foot (30 centimeters) of water.

It was the first of several storms expected to roll across California over the next week. The current system is expected to be warmer and wetter, while next week’s storms will be colder, said Hannah Chandler-Cooley, a meteorologist at the National Weather Service in Sacramento.

And as streets flooded and river water levels rose, the storm also forced residents of several small communities in northern California out of their homes on New Year’s Eve as evacuation orders and warnings were issued.

The National Weather Service said the Cosumnes and Mokelumne rivers were overflowing and the Mormon Slough was also overflowing. There were flood warnings in the southern section of the valley.

Three communities were told to evacuate by the Santa Cruz County Sheriff’s Office due to the creek flooding, while Paradise Park and Felton were also ordered to leave due to the San Lorenzo River waters.

On Saturday, firefighters responded to fallen trees on homes and cars as well as to people who became disabled after their vehicles became stuck in the water, officials said.

The Amador County Sheriff’s Office shared an image of cars up to their door handles in floods and said there had been reports of flooding, mudslides and trees blocking roads.

Highway 50 was reopened just after midnight, hours after a section between Pollock Pines and Meyers was closed due to flooding from the American River, while another section was closed over Echo Summit for avalanche control work.

State of Emergency for Sacramento County, Calif., after the First Day of Winter Storms on December 26, 2018, a day after the Russian River

The state of emergency was declared by the county because of the atmospheric river that has caused flooding and wreaked havoc in the area.

More than 4 feet (1.2 meters) of snow had accumulated in the high Sierra Nevada, and the Mammoth Mountain Ski Area said heavy, wet snow would cause major delays in chairlift openings. On Saturday, the resort had a number of lift closings due to weather and ice.

The Nevada State line and Colfax were reported to have dangerous and slippery driving conditions, with hundreds of cars stuck on the I-80 and county roads.

Emergency crews rescued people from vehicles that couldn’t move because of floodwaters. At least one death was linked to the weekend storm, after workers in southern Sacramento County found a person dead inside a vehicle submerged in water near Highway 99, as member station Capital Public Radio reports.

With the region drying out on New Year’s Day and there being no rain for Monday’s Rose Parade in Pasadena, spectators began setting up their spots for the annual floral spectacle.

At least two people died in the storm, including one who was found dead inside a completely submerged vehicle Saturday in Sacramento County, and a 72-year-old man who died after being struck by a fallen tree at a Santa Cruz park, according to officials.

An evacuation order was issued Sunday for the rural Sacramento County areas of Point Pleasant, while Glanville Tract and Franklin Pond were under an evacuation warning.

“It is expected that the flooding from the Cosumnes River and the Mokelumne River is moving southwest toward I-5 and could reach these areas in the middle of the night,” the agency tweeted.

There is a sobering message for people who are reeling from the floods and mud slides: the situation may get much worse before it gets better.

It’s the third atmospheric river to hit the region since Dec. 26, the office said, adding that parts of the Russian River are now at particular flood risk. The NWS also says the storm’s high winds could inflict severe damage in areas where the soil is already saturated with rainwater.

Los Angeles, Calif., Mayor Mary Spencer-Gode and the Sacramento Elm Tree were killed by a Superfluid Storm on New Year’s Eve

As of midday Monday local time, around 39,000 electricity accounts were without power in California, with another 20,000 in Nevada, according to PowerOutage.us.

On Sunday, Sacramento’s Mary Spencer-Gode and other residents gaped at the damage on their street, where the storm toppled a massive elm tree on New Year’s Eve.

She said the wind was going crazy. “We turned off the TV so we could hear it, and I heard a noise that moved the house, and I was sitting in the kitchen.”

Bob Oravec, a senior forecaster at the NWS, recently told NPR that “it’s just a narrow area of high moisture that travels away from the tropics towards the higher latitudes.”

Atmospheric rivers are more likely to occur in a La Niña climate pattern like the one we’re now seeing, with waters in the Pacific Ocean cooler than average. This is the third consecutive winter in which La Niña has prevailed, according to Climate.gov.

forecasts show the storm slowing as it approaches land, which could lead to more damage, and prompting forecasters along the coast to raise the alarm.

Belen De Leon of NBC Los Angeles stated that the storm isn’t over, even if there is some patches of clear sky.

State Water Resources Director, Karla Nemeth warned that burn scar areas and other sensitive terrain could be potential sites of dangerous mudslides if we move from extreme dehydration to floods.

As wells run dry and reservoirs drain, Julie Kalansky, a climate scientist at Scripps Institution of Oceanography in San Diego, said these storms are desperately needed more than ever to alleviate the drought, despite the hazards they bring in some areas.

“They’re two sides of the same coin: they can be extremely beneficial because they bring so much of California’s water supply to the state or they can also be drought busters,” Kalansky told CNN. When the duration becomes too long, they come back to back and can cause flooding when the landscape doesn’t get an opportunity to absorb the rain.

A 2022 study authored by Swain found that climate change has already doubled the chances of a disastrous megaflood happening in California in the next four decades – a storm unlike anything anyone alive today has ever experienced.

The National Weather Service in San Francisco said that some of the forecast rain totals are impressive and should be taken with a grain of salt. A number of systems have caused saturated soil, increased flow in rivers and streams, and set the stage for this to become a high impact event.

Nancy Ward, the new director of the California Governor’s Office of Emergency Services, spoke at a late morning news conference about the threat of a series of storms in the last five years.

Weather experts warned people in their coverage areas on Wednesday to prepare for potential power outages, and for travel to be threatened by high winds, debris and felled trees and power lines.

The precipitation can be extreme: A single atmospheric river “can carry more water than the Mississippi River at its mouth,” as NPR has reported. The systems’ winds are very dangerous, according to forecasters. In 2017, one of the storms toppled the legendary “Pioneer Cabin Tree” sequoia in Calaveras Big Trees State Park.

State and local authorities are urging residents of Santa Barbara County to follow the lead of a big storm with a red zone evacuation order through the following day

A bomb storm slammed into California on Wednesday night, lashing the state with big rains and strong winds as it advanced on the coast.

A large winter storm is buffeting California’s coastal and inland areas with winds, rain and snow. The storm brought more rain and floods to the area on Thursday.

A storm with a one inch an hour rain rate could cause flooding and mudslides in a region that already had deadly floods last weekend.

The governor issued a statewide emergency declaration Wednesday, clearing the way for the distribution of aid for people in the path of the storm.

As the storm marched towards California, firefighters and rescue equipment were stationed near burn scar areas across seven counties, as well as five other counties with flooding concerns, state officials said.

Among the areas ordered to evacuate is Montecito, the site of a mudslide in 2018 that killed 23 people as mud and boulders the size of houses plowed down the Santa Barbara hillsides, splintering more than 100 homes and rupturing a gas main, according to the state’s Office of Emergency Services.

Das Williams, the first district supervisor in Santa Barbara County, is urging residents to comply with the evacuated areas. “If you live in that red zone, the one thing that we should’ve learned these past five years is that it’s better to play it safe and to evacuate and comply with the order.”

Officials in Monterey County also started setting up evacuation points and emergency shelters ahead of the storm’s arrival, according to the sheriff’s Facebook page.

A long stretch of coastal Highway 1 in both directions was closed because of Rock slides from Ragged Point in San Luis Obispo County to south of Big sur in Monterey County, said the California Department of Transportation.

Is the “Pennent Pineapple Express” still going strong in the Bay Area? A spokeswoman for the San Francisco Department of Emergency Management

Flooding impacts have already been reported in the city, according to San Francisco Department of Emergency Management Executive Director Mary Ellen Carroll. Some of the streets in the city have some kind of hole in them. We’re seeing mudslides – nothing significant at this point. But the more rain we get and the less time in between, we know we’re going to see more of those conditions,” Carroll told CNN.

San Francisco fire officials said they rescued a trapped family Wednesday night, sharing images of a crew working to remove a large tree that was on top of a sedan.

And earlier in the day, there were reports of falling glass from a downtown high rise in Fox Plaza, though no injuries were reported. “It is unknown at this time if this is wind-related – highly possible though,” the San Francisco Fire Department said in a tweet.

Across the bay, Oakland declared a local emergency, bracing for the possibility of storm damage and flooding on the city’s roads.

California’s largest gas and electric utility company, Pacific Gas and Electric, reported the storm was damaging its equipment and causing widespread outages Wednesday evening.

The trees and power lines have been knocked down. In San Francisco, a tree fell directly on a car, briefly trapping a family inside (more on that below).

Hundreds of crews are staged in the Bay Area region, as well as some from Southern California, according to the vice president of the region.

The storms that struck the area are going to be ranked up there with one of the storms that I’ve seen before.

The “potent Pineapple Express” that brought on the intense weather came from around the Hawaiian Islands to the Pacific coast, according to the National Weather Service.

The Los Angeles Times reveals that a young man in Sacramento, California, died in a massive thunderstorm on Wednesday afternoon after a falling landscaping tree

In downtown San Francisco, winds snapped a mature landscaping tree off at its base and dropped it onto a Honda sedan, trapping a family in their car next to the San Francisco Public Library’s main branch. Firefighters who used chainsaws to rescue the family reported that the occupants were OK.

“Fallen trees are all over the Bay Area with the current storm, and power lines have been torn down by them,” stated a report from the Bay Area Rapid Transit.

A young child – about age 1 or 2 – was killed Wednesday after a redwood tree fell on a home in Sonoma County in Northern California, Occidental Volunteer Fire Department Chief Ron Lunardi said.

A 19-year-old woman who was driving a car died when she drove onto a flooded road on Wednesday morning. As KQED reports, the driver’s vehicle hydroplaned and hit a utility pole.

Officials in California’s Santa Cruz County are seeing “significant damage” from the storm, adding that enormous waves and high tides have damaged piers along the coastline.

The city of Sausalito had a landmark bronze sea lion sculpture that had to be removed because of rough conditions.

The NWS office said that there would be rain and snow in the afternoon and evening.

“Meteorologists here sometimes talk about what they call the ‘storm parade,’ which refers to us having a series of atmospheric rivers back to back to back,” Stark said. “That’s really what’s happening right now: We’re looking at having another series of big storms this weekend, and even into next week.”

In nearby San Francisco, some saw localized flooding, mudslides and sinkholes as of Wednesday evening, said Mary Ellen Carol, executive director of the city’s emergency management department.

Weather alerts beyond some that expired Friday are expected to be issued this weekend for places due for a mix of rain and snow. Here’s what’s forecast for millions:

Even a 40 mph wind can do damage when the ground is so saturated from record rainfall earlier this week and the cumulative effect of the new rainfall expected this weekend.

The rainfall over the weekend brought renewed flood concerns for local streams, creeks, and rivers. The Colgan Creek, Berryessa Creek, Mark West Creek, Green Valley Creek, and the Cosumnes River all have gauges that are currently above flood stage or expected to be in the next few days.

Seasonal patterns in the Pacific, as predicted by the Climate Prediction Center, as a tool for understanding how the weather patterns are different during one year or the other

There are guidelines given by the Climate Prediction Center about what the overall forecast can be for a seasonal time period.

The Pacific Northwest and Southern California are more likely to see more rain during La Nia than normal. The jet stream has a wavier pattern and is being pushed farther north. This is the sign.

The Atmospheric rivers can occur during El Nios or La Nias and the locations for them can be influenced by the larger patterns in the Pacific.

According to Michael Tippett, a professor at Columbia University, the forecast patterns are supposed to be used on the whole season rather than on a day-to-day basis. This is why studying the patterns is so important.

There is a randomness that is not explained by the patterns. “This might help us understand why one year is different than the other.”

State climatologist Michael Anderson told a news briefing late Saturday that officials were closely monitoring Monday’s incoming storm and another behind it and were keeping an eye on three other systems farther out in the Pacific.

The Long-Term Impact of a Super-Area Weather Storm on the Sierra, Lake Tahoe, and the Midwest, as Predicted by the State Department of Weather and Communications

The city’s communications infrastructure, cellular and internet, is underground so “as we get more inundation from the rain, we’re seeing more failure around those, what we call lifeline systems” for power and communication, said Carroll.

This has led the prediction center to issue a Level 3 out of 4 risk for excessive rainfall for over 15 million people in the state on Monday including those in San Francisco, Sacramento, Monterey, Fresno, and Oxnard. If the guidance keeps increasing precipitation totals, the prediction center wrote in their discussion on Sunday that a Level 4 high risk notice is necessary for Monday.

As the storm pushes farther inland, “Localized areas of 5+ feet (of snow) possible along the Sierra crest west of Lake Tahoe. Waves up to 4 feet on Lake Tahoe,” the weather service added.

“Overall, there is high confidence (60-80%) that this wetter-than-normal pattern will continue through the next couple of weeks,” the weather service in San Francisco said. “While we don’t have details on how much rain above normal will fall, suffice it to say that the continuation of saturated soils could continue to pose hazards into the third week of January.”

Editor’s Note: A version of this article originally appeared in the weekly weather newsletter, the CNN Weather Brief, which is released every Monday. You can sign up for them to be delivered every week or during storms.

There are storm warnings for southern Wyoming where there are nearly two feet of snow and winds more than 70 mph. The wind chill is predicted to be 25 degrees below zero.

Thursday will bring a lot of ice for some cities, including Chicago. Ice could also be a problem for parts of the Ohio Valley, yet pinpointing exactly where it will occur is challenging this far out. Stay tuned with the forecast if you live in these areas, because freezing rain and sleet could halt your travel plans and even cause power outages.

Meanwhile, the Southeast will continue to see unusually high temperatures Thursday – as high as 30 to 40 degrees above normal – after more than 30 daily record highs were recorded there and parts of the Appalachians and lower Midwest on Wednesday. There could be more than 80 records broken on Thursday.

This week will be almost all over the nation with wild weather, from buried under three feet of snow, to record warmth and frigid temperatures.

At the same time, it will feel more like early summer across the Southeast and up into the Midwest, as nearly 150 million Americans will see a high above 70 degrees this week. The highs in the Dakotas and central Florida will both be in the 90s, as the country as a whole will see a stark contrast.

As part of the same system, there will be rain and storms in the Midwest and Plains late Tuesday and Wednesday. The Upper Midwest could also see heavy rainfall and severe storms beginning Wednesday.

State of the Art in South Dakota: Public Works, Technicolor, Education, and Virtual Learning from High-Area Snowstorms

The temperatures in the 70s and 80s will begin to rise Tuesday and stay there through Thursday, when some cities could reach into the 90s. These temperatures are running between 20 to 35 degrees above normal and are usually highs in May or early June.

Gov. Tim Walz directed the state’s National Guard, the transportation department and the state patrol to be prepared to respond storm impacts, he said on Twitter.

There are ice storm warnings for five million people in Iowa, southern Wisconsin, northern Illinois and southern Michigan. There are blizzard warnings for two million people across Wyoming, Minnesota, Wisconsin and the Dakotas.

It is in South Dakota. The state has already seen 4 inches of snow, but it’s not all that uncommon to see up to 16 inches and 45 mph winds.

South Dakota’s governor announced Tuesday the closures of state government executive branch offices Wednesday in more than half of the state’s 66 counties, with plans for employees to work remotely. Additionally, Interstates 29 and 90 partially closed Tuesday night to prepare for the expected snow.

Eastern Wyoming College announced the closure of its main campus. The Natrona County school district in Casper will conduct a virtual learning day Wednesday due to hazardous weather and road conditions throughout the area, the district said.

Minnesota Governor Tony Evers declares a statewide energy emergency for Wednesday afternoon snow storms and whiteouts in the Southern hemisphere

The residents of the US’s Northern states are getting ready for the large amounts of snow, high winds, and whiteout conditions that are predicted on Wednesday.

Schools across Minnesota announced closures as the state’s governor said on Twitter he would direct the state’s National Guard, transportation department and state patrol to be ready to respond.

The Southeast and the mid-Atlantic are expected to see nice weather on Wednesday, with highs in the 70s and 80s.

But that warm front isn’t likely to stick around for much longer. By Thursday, the same storm that’s blanketing the plains will begin to slip into upstate New York and central New England, sending colder temperatures further south by the weekend.

The state highway patrol said that search and rescue operations were underway in several counties across Wyoming to recover motorists that become trapped in heavy snow.

The Minnesota State Patrol said that more than 160 vehicle crashes were reported, and dozens of cars spun off roads, in the areas that saw 3-7 inches of snow with locally higher amounts. Lt. Gordon Shank said that in a series of posts.

In Wisconsin – similarly hit by snow since Tuesday in the north and freezing rain Wednesday in the south – Gov. Tony Evers declared a statewide energy emergency Wednesday, saying it will “allow for a more swift and efficient restoration of any electric power outages throughout the state,” a news release from his office said.

Los Angeles and Ventura Counties will be under a snow storm warning from Friday morning through Saturday afternoon. That will be the first blizzard warning issued by the weather service’s Los Angeles office since 1989, it said.

The Northern Rockies and the Southern Rockies Embedded in the First Day of the Cold War: A Meteorological Resolved Emergency Plan

A 100 degree difference between the Northern Rockies and the South was created by the dueling winter storm and heat wave.

The international airport in Green Bay was closed on Wednesday evening and most of its flights were canceled Thursday morning.

• Maine government offices closed: Gov. Janet Mills announced that state offices would be closed Thursday as the storm “is expected to bring significant snowfall to most of the state,” her office said in a release.

Atlanta was 81 degrees on Wednesday, an all-time record in February. Washington, D.C., New Orleans and Nashville were all in the 80s on Wednesday.

The warm temperatures in the Mid-Atlantic and Southern states were noteworthy, the National Weather Service said. Nashville, Tennessee, and Richmond, Va., saw temperatures go to 83 and 85 degrees, respectively.

The National Weather Service urged boaters near the coast to seek safe harbor immediately because of the risk of severe storms that could cause waterspouts and/or easily overturn boats. Small tornadoes are a possibility in the two counties.

San Jose, Napa and other parts of the region have been issued a freeze warning for Friday evening through Saturday morning. The sub-freezing conditions will be especially dangerous to unsheltered populations, crops and unprotected outdoor plumbing.

Michigan in particular was hit with freezing rain and ice that disrupted travel and was risky for livestock and infrastructure. Port Austin and Midland saw the most snow, with 8 inches and 8.9 inches respectively. The southern part of the state saw ice accumulate, according to the National Weather Service.