Thousands displaced by storm in California, one dead in ‘endless avalanche’

Severe weath­er in Cal­i­for­nia has forced thou­sands to evac­u­ate, leav­ing one per­son dead and one child miss­ing this week, and tens of thou­sands of pow­er com­pa­nies with­out pow­er on Tues­day morning.

Mod­er­ate to heavy rain is expect­ed across much of Cal­i­for­nia on Tues­day as a new low pres­sure sys­tem head­ing toward Cal­i­for­nia as part of the “Cyclone Parade” led to a series of res­cue oper­a­tions. Hous­es were flood­ed, roads turned into rivers, and cars were swept away by the deluge.

On Avi­la Beach, about 110 miles north of Los Ange­les, one per­son died after a car was swept away, said Ani­ta Konopa, an offi­cial with the San Luis Obis­po Coun­ty Emer­gency Ser­vices Department.

A child is miss­ing after his car was flood­ed near Paso Rob­les in the north of the coun­try, said Scott Jal­bert of the agency. Tony Cop­po­la, spokesman for the San Luis Obis­po Coun­ty Sher­if­f’s Depart­ment, said the search for the boy was sus­pend­ed Mon­day after­noon due to the extreme cir­cum­stances. On Tues­day morn­ing, it was unclear when the search would resume.

Accord­ing to PowerOutage.us, more than 63,000 util­i­ty cus­tomers in Cal­i­for­nia were with­out pow­er ear­ly Tues­day morn­ing. At least 13,000 of them were in Sacra­men­to Coun­ty, accord­ing to the Out­age Tracker.

As the tor­ren­tial rains in the state eased, anoth­er low pres­sure sys­tem quick­ly gained strength on the west coast and head­ed into the state, accord­ing to the Nation­al Weath­er Service.

“A nev­er-end­ing chain of pow­er­ful sys­tems with rivers of atmos­pher­ic water vapor con­tin­ue to flood Cal­i­for­nia,” he said.

Mod­er­ate to heavy rain is expect­ed across much of Cal­i­for­nia Tues­day through Tues­day night, with sev­er­al feet of snow expect­ed along the Sier­ra Neva­da. The heavy rains are expect­ed to exac­er­bate ongo­ing flood­ing and linger the dan­ger of flash floods and land­slides across the state.

Author­i­ties on Mon­day issued an imme­di­ate evac­u­a­tion order for the entire Mon­tecito area, home to many celebri­ties, includ­ing Prince Har­ry and Meghan Markle, as well as San­ta Bar­bara and oth­er near­by cities, amid height­ened risks of flood­ing and landslides.