More than 65 crashes in California due to storm that keeps more than 38 million under alert

Authorities in Los Angeles, California, reported at least 65 traffic accidents due to the storm that has affected the area since Sunday with heavy rains and flooding.

It is unclear how many of these incidents resulted in injuries.

Additionally, as of Monday afternoon, firefighters in the city had responded to more than 130 flooding incidents and 49 landslides. Authorities have also had to extinguish half a dozen structure fires and carry out several rescues of motorists stranded in floodwaters since the storm began, Kristin M. Crowley, chief of the Los Angeles Fire Department, said at a press conference, to which refers to a report from Noticias Telemundo.

The storm system impacting the state began moving on Sunday with heavy rain and even snow.

As of yesterday, some 350,000 homes and businesses were without electricity in California, especially in the north and center of the state, due to the impact of the phenomenon.

The electric company Pacific Gas & Electric reported that the storm that hit the state was one of the most damaging in terms of service interruption in a single day.

“In terms of total outages, it was one of the three most damaging single-day storms on record,” said Sumeet Singh, the company’s director of operations.

In the early hours of today, a message from Pacific Gas & Electric on the social network X (formerly Twitter) indicates that more than 3,000 workers continue working to restore service to residents.

“More than 3,000 PG&E employees continue to work through challenging conditions to repair damaged equipment and restore service to customers. As of yesterday (Monday) PG&E has restored electricity to approximately one million customers,” the entry reads.

The effects of the storm are expected to continue impacting the region at least until Tuesday.

Some 38 million people are under flood alerts due to the system.

According to meteorologists, the greatest danger comes from the path of the atmospheric river, a column of moisture drawn from the Pacific Ocean.

An atmospheric river is a relatively long, narrow region in the atmosphere, like “rivers in the sky,” that transport much of the water vapor away from the tropics.

“Although atmospheric rivers can vary greatly in size and strength, the average atmospheric river carries an amount of water vapor nearly equivalent to the average water flow at the mouth of the Mississippi River. Exceptionally strong atmospheric rivers can transport up to 15 times that amount. When the atmospheric river hits land, it usually releases that water vapor in the form of rain or snow,” they explain from the website of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).