In some Central California communities, residents have had to pack up and leave several times already this year because of atmospheric rivers.
WATSONVILLE, Calif. — Evacuation orders were in force, announced late on Thursday through social media posts and over speakers used by the local police department. Another storm was approaching. Residents needed to get to safety.
As he had done during the previous storm, Cesar Leon, 39, the director of the Salvation Army shelter in the small agricultural city of Watsonville, helped bus his patrons to an emergency setup at the nearby fairgrounds.
This time around, though, the sentiment was different, he said: “They didn’t want to leave, because they just did it a month ago.”
It has been a brutal winter for much of California, where areas beleaguered by a succession of atmospheric rivers — storms named for their long narrow shape and the immense amount of water they carry — have grown weary of living under the constant specter of flooding.
Yet another powerful storm system pummeled the state on Friday, particularly the central region. The storm stranded residents, washed away portions of roads, turned snow into icy sludge, prompted evacuations, caused power outages and contributed to at least one death. President Biden approved an emergency declaration request from Gov. Gavin Newsom, authorizing the Federal Emergency Management Agency to coordinate relief efforts in more than 30 counties.
In places like Watsonville, a city of about 50,000 in Santa Cruz County accustomed to fog and cool temperatures, there has been a shudder of “not again” every time inclement weather approaches.
“People start panicking this time of year,” said Alex Lopez, 54, who is employed at a local farm that harvests lettuce and broccoli. “It’s time to work, not be at home. People are losing money.”
Mr. Lopez, who grew up in the area, recalled that when storms would hit a few decades ago, he would play in the water, floating down the river in an inner tube.
The onslaught of recent storms over the last few months has taken a toll on crops and on the labor force. The wet winter has meant that farmers’ fertilizing and harvesting schedules have been thrown off. Mr. Lopez has noticed that the lettuce is growing too slowly.
“The last two floods, it was all over the fields and all of the roads,” he said. “You couldn’t go through.”
The latest storm began Thursday night with heavy rain in the Bay Area, and was believed to have been a factor in the collapse of the roof of an Oakland warehouse used by Peet’s Coffee. One male employee died and a female employee was injured.
Nancy Ward, director of the California Governor’s Office of Emergency Services, said that about 9,400 people across the state were under evacuation orders, and more than 54,000 utility customers were without power.
Monterey, a onetime fishing town now better known for its sunbathing California sea lions and famed aquarium, had been off line since Thursday evening, with no working traffic lights and only dark windows at businesses and homes. Intense rain and howling wind brought down some trees and branches there overnight.
Palisades Tahoe, a popular ski resort north of Lake Tahoe where the 1960 Winter Olympics were held, announced on Twitter that it would close on Friday “due to high avalanche danger and flooding.” The resort said that ridge-top winds had reached 139 miles an hour, and that there was rain falling at elevations as high as 8,500 feet — evidence of the atmospheric river’s warm precipitation, after weeks of blizzards in the region.
Crews in South Lake Tahoe have spent the week clearing snow from roads, but for a while on Friday, they had to focus on removing the snow and ice that was blocking storm drains and causing flooding around the city.
