State transportation officials said Friday they removed so much snow from the roadways in February that it would be enough to fill the iconic Rose Bowl 100 times.
SANTA CRUZ, Calif. — More than 9,000 California residents were under evacuation orders Friday as a new atmospheric river brought heavy rain, thunderstorms and strong winds, swelling rivers and creeks and flooding several major highways and small rural communities.
In central California, the Tule River overflowed its banks and flooded several homes. Videos posted on social media showed a handful of homes and cars under a few feet of water and at least one road washed out by the rushing river in Springville, a Tulare County town of about 1,000 people in the foothills of the southern Sierra Nevada.
Morgan Lynn Searcy, 24, lives near the river and said her neighborhood is under an evacuation warning. She has been keeping an eye on the rising waters in case she and her boyfriend need to leave.Several public parks nearby, including the Sequoia and Kings Canyon National Parks, were closed to visitors due to the ongoing heavy rain.
The storm marked the state’s 10th atmospheric river of the winter, storms that have brought enormous amounts of rain and snow to the state and helped lessen the that had dragged on for three years. State reservoirs that had dipped to strikingly low levels are now well above the average for this time of year, prompting state officials to release water from dams to assist with flood control and make room for even more rain.
The atmospheric river, known as a “Pineapple Express” because it brought warm subtropical moisture across the Pacific from near Hawaii, was melting lower parts of the huge snowpack built in California’s mountains. Snow levels in the Sierra Nevada, which provides about a third of the state’s water supply, are more than 180% of the April 1 average, when it is historically at its peak.
to temporarily suspend some environmental rules to let the state take more water out of rivers and streams to store for later. But it has rained so much since then that on Thursday regulators rescinded their previous order to allow more water to stay in the rivers.
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