{"id":469479,"date":"2025-12-24T20:48:18","date_gmt":"2025-12-24T20:48:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/469479\/"},"modified":"2025-12-24T20:48:18","modified_gmt":"2025-12-24T20:48:18","slug":"powerful-storm-hits-california-bringing-mudslide-warnings-snow-more","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/469479\/","title":{"rendered":"Powerful storm hits California, bringing mudslide warnings, snow, more"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Rain<\/a>Rain clouds over the San Diego skyline. (File photo by Chris Stone\/Times of San Diego)<\/p>\n

A powerful winter storm swept across California on Wednesday, with heavy rain and gusty winds leading to evacuation warnings for mudslides in the south, bringing near white-out snow conditions in the mountains and\u00a0hazardous travel<\/a>\u00a0for millions of holiday drivers.<\/p>\n

Forecasters said Southern California could see its wettest Christmas in years and warned about flash flooding and mudslides. Areas scorched by\u00a0January\u2019s wildfires<\/a>\u00a0were under evacuation warnings, and Los Angeles County officials said Tuesday they were going door to door to about 380 especially vulnerable homes to order residents to evacuate.<\/p>\n

The San Bernardino County Sheriff\u2019s Department also issued an evacuation warning Wednesday morning for the community of Wrightwood, a mountain resort town in the San Gabriel Mountains about 80 miles (130 kilometers) northeast of Los Angeles, due to potential mud and debris flows from the storm.<\/p>\n

Debris and mud were seen rushing down the road leading into Wrightwood in a social media video posted by county fire officials. Crews were working to evacuate some homes, the post said. County officials didn\u2019t immediately return questions about the evacuation.<\/p>\n

Areas along the coast, including Malibu, were under flood warnings Wednesday, local officials said. Much of the Sacramento Valley and the San Francisco Bay Area were also under wind and flood advisories.<\/p>\n

Heavy rain douses Southern California<\/p>\n

Early Wednesday, the Los Angeles Fire Department rescued a man trapped in a drainage tunnel in northwest LA that led down to a river. No injuries were reported, but the man is being evaluated.<\/p>\n

Several roadways across the regions were closed due to flooding.<\/p>\n

Conditions could worsen as multiple\u00a0atmospheric rivers<\/a>\u00a0move across the state during one of the busiest travel weeks of the year. The storm in Los Angeles was expected to strengthen into Wednesday afternoon before tapering off later in the evening.<\/p>\n

James Dangerfield, an 84-year-old Altadena resident, said his family and neighbor helped place sandbags in his backyard earlier this week. His neighborhood was under a flash flood warning as of Wednesday morning, but he wasn\u2019t too worried.<\/p>\n

He lives on a hill, so most rain water flows away from them, he said. For now, he and his wife, Stephanie, planned on staying in the house and spending Christmas Eve with their two adult daughters and grandchildren.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re just going to stay put and everybody will have to come to us. We\u2019re not going to go anywhere,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Mike Burdick, who takes care of his elderly parents in Altadena, said he ran out to buy more sandbags Wednesday morning when he saw that the pool was already overflowing. His parents live just a block under\u00a0the Eaton Fire<\/a>\u00a0burn scars, he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cI literally woke up to just downpour,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

The family was prepared to evacuate with a week\u2019s worth of essentials for the family, including for their dog and cat. They\u2019re planning to attend a nearby holiday party in the evening.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re just going to make an appearance and get back safe to our animals,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Southern California typically gets half an inch to 1 inch of rain this time of year, but this week many areas could see between 4 and 8 inches, National Weather Service meteorologist Mike Wofford said. It could be even more in the mountains.<\/p>\n

Much of California is under weather warnings<\/p>\n

Forecasters also warned that heavy snow and gusts were expected to create \u201cnear white-out conditions\u201d in parts of the Sierra Nevada and make it \u201cnearly impossible\u201d to travel through the mountain passes. As of Wednesday morning, there was also a \u201cconsiderable\u201d avalanche risk around Lake Tahoe, according to the Sierra Avalanche Center.<\/p>\n

The National Weather Service said a winter storm warning would be in effect for the Greater Tahoe Region until Friday morning.<\/p>\n

In Monterey along the central coast, wind gusts reportedly reached 60 mph (97 kph). More than 5,000 people lost power Tuesday night due to a damaged power pole, according to Pacific Gas and Electric Co.<\/p>\n

California Highway Patrol was also investigating a seemingly weather-related fatal crash Wednesday morning south of Sacramento. The driver reportedly traveled at an unsafe speed, lost control of their vehicle on the wet roads and crashed into a metal power pole, CHP Officer Michael Harper said in an email.<\/p>\n

San Francisco and Los Angeles airports reported some minor flight delays Wednesday morning.<\/p>\n

Gov. Gavin Newsom on Wednesday also declared state of emergency in six counties to allow state assistance in storm response.<\/p>\n

Atmospheric rivers<\/a>\u00a0transport moisture from the tropics to northern latitudes in long, narrow bands of water vapor that form over an ocean and flow through the sky.<\/p>\n

The storm has already caused damage in Northern California, where flash flooding led to water rescues and\u00a0at least one death<\/a>, authorities said.<\/p>\n

The state has deployed emergency resources and first responders to several coastal and Southern California counties, and the California National Guard remains on standby.<\/p>\n

Associated Press writers Sophie Austin in Sacramento and Jessica Hill in Las Vegas contributed to this report.<\/p>\n

READ NEXT<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Rain clouds over the San Diego skyline. (File photo by Chris Stone\/Times of San Diego) A powerful winter…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":469480,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5134],"tags":[5229,1582,276,285,8580,27162,213388,100428,6773,3549,7264,7925,67,586,132,5230,68,2969,177393],"class_list":{"0":"post-469479","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-san-diego","8":"tag-america","9":"tag-ca","10":"tag-california","11":"tag-climate-change","12":"tag-flooding","13":"tag-gusty-winds","14":"tag-mudslides","15":"tag-powerful-storm","16":"tag-rain","17":"tag-san-diego","18":"tag-sandiego","19":"tag-storm","20":"tag-united-states","21":"tag-united-states-of-america","22":"tag-unitedstates","23":"tag-unitedstatesofamerica","24":"tag-us","25":"tag-usa","26":"tag-winter-storm"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115776514344255764","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/469479","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=469479"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/469479\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/469480"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=469479"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=469479"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=469479"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}