Major storm causes California chaos

Tue, 21 Dec 2010

Los Angeles - A sixth straight day of rain pounded southern California on Tuesday, continuing a trail of chaos that has disrupted the normally balmy region as residents braced for an even bigger storm that was due to hit later in the day.

The deluge has swollen rivers and streams, cut power to tens of thousands of homes and forced thousands to evacuate because of the danger of mudslides.

Since Friday, downtown Los Angeles has received more than 12 centimeters of rain, breaking records that go back to 1921, and representing more than a third of the location's average annual rainfall.

Mammoth Mountain, southern California's largest winter sorts area, has been buried under a record of more than 4 meters of snow that has fallen since last week. Winds of more than 160 kilometers per hour have been raging at the resort's peaks, and forecasters are predicting another meter of snowfall by Wednesday.

Such storms are highly unusual, according to Bill Hoffer, spokesman for the National Weather Service in Oxnard.

Normally, a region of high pressure over the central Pacific Ocean deflects storms away from California and farther to the north into Oregon and Washington. But that pressure has weakened, allowing moist, warm Pacific storm systems to stretch from Asia through Hawaii into California. Such a weather pattern pops up once every 10-15 years, he said.

Source: Earth Times.
Link: http://www.earthtimes.org/articles/news/359229,storm-causes-california-chaos.html.