Good morning, and welcome to the Essential California newsletter. It’s Thursday, Jan. 5. I’m Julia Wick, a City Hall reporter and your former newsletter scribe, writing from rainy Los Angeles.
Gov. Gavin Newsom declared a state of emergency Wednesday, as yet another powerful storm battered the state. Northern California bore the brunt of the onslaught, with evacuations, power outages and heightened fears of flooding and debris flows.
Californians are unfortunately no stranger to brutal weather, but this week’s moisture-rich atmospheric river had been preceded by particularly dire warnings. San Francisco Mayor London Breed said the city was “preparing for a war” and Nancy Ward, director of the Governor’s Office of Emergency Services, said she anticipated that “this may be one of the most challenging and impactful series of storms to touch down in California in the last five years.”
The issue is not just the strength of this particular storm, but the fact that it comes after a deluge of several successive storms — meaning much of the state is already water-saturated, exacerbating flooding concerns. Wednesday’s storm is the third atmospheric river to hit California in the last two weeks.
Years of drought — which theoretically would make the extra water welcome— have also heightened the dangers of heavy rains. As my colleague Hayley Smith explains, prolonged drought conditions have weakened the state’s soil and left trees brittle. Worsening wildfires have left large swaths of burn scars that are highly vulnerable to landslides and increased stream flows.
My colleagues Hannah Wiley, Jessica Garrison, Summer Lin and Ruben Vives report that officials throughout the state were rushing to bring some of the tens of thousands of unhoused residents living on streets and along waterways into shelter.
By 5:45 p.m., San Francisco had run out of sandbags. Sacramento Mayor Darrell Steinberg urged residents “if at all possible to stay home.” An electronic freeway sign looming over Highway 99 north of Fresno warned drivers to avoid travel amid severe weather.
What comes next:
A brief respite is in sight, but not for long.
Friday is expected to “be a bit of a break day,” according to the National Weather Service’s Bay Area office; the Los Angeles office also says storm activity should decrease in the region by Thursday night, with Friday looking dry. But more storms are expected through mid-January.
For those looking to get through the last of this storm and prepare for what’s ahead, my colleague Jessica Roy has put together a great guide to staying safe during rainstorms, with lots of helpful tips and useful information
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