Millions of individuals have been beneath flood warnings, and greater than 200,000 properties and companies have been with out energy due to heavy rains, lightning, hail and landslides. Thousands have been ordered to evacuate their properties.

At least 17 individuals have died from storms that started late final month, Gov. Gavin Newsom mentioned throughout a go to to the scenic city of Capitola on the Santa Cruz coast that was laborious hit by excessive surf and flooding creek waters final week. The deaths included a pickup truck driver and motorcyclist killed Tuesday morning when a eucalyptus tree fell on them on Highway 99 within the San Joaquin Valley close to Visalia, the California Highway Patrol mentioned.

“We’ve had less people die in the last two years of major wildfires in California than have died since New Year’s Day related to this weather,” Newsom mentioned. “These conditions are serious and they’re deadly.”

The storm that started Monday dumped greater than a foot (30 centimeters) of rain at greater elevations in central and Southern California and buried Sierra Nevada ski resorts in additional than 5 ft (1.5 meters) of snow.

Kim Ochoa leaves her Merced, California, residence, which is surrounded by floodwaters, as storms proceed to batter the state. (AP Photo/Noah Berger)

Rockfalls and landslides shut down roads, and gushing runoff turned sections of freeways into waterways. Swollen rivers swamped properties and residents of small communities inundated with water and dirt have been stranded.

“We’re all stuck out here,” mentioned Brian Briggs, after the deluge unleashed mudslides in distant Matilija Canyon that buried one home utterly and cutoff the one highway to close by Ojai.

Briggs described a scary night time the place the canyon creek started to flood individuals’s yards and the encompassing hills — stripped of vegetation within the 2017 Thomas Fire — started to tumble down in the dead of night.

Mudflows dragged sheds, gazebos and outhouses into the creek, he mentioned. After serving to neighbors get to greater floor, he returned residence to seek out his fence destroyed by waist-deep mud.

A helicopter dropped 10 sheriff’s deputies Tuesday to assist the residents.

Residents of the small agricultural group of Planada, which is alongside a principal freeway resulting in Yosemite National Park, have been ordered Tuesday to pack up and go away after Bear Creek overflowed and flooded some properties.

A break within the climate Tuesday on the central coast allowed searchers close to San Miguel to search for Kyle Doan, the kid who vanished after he and his mom have been stranded in a truck in rising waters. His mom was rescued, however Kyle was swept away, and a seven-hour search Monday turned up solely one in all his Nike footwear.

“It’s still very dangerous out there,” mentioned San Luis Obispo County sheriff’s spokesperson Tony Cipolla. “The creeks are very fast flowing.”

The moist and blustery climate left California’s giant homeless inhabitants in a precarious scenario. At least two homeless individuals in Sacramento County died, and greater than a dozen individuals have been rescued from a homeless encampment on the Ventura River.

Theo Harris, who has been dwelling on the streets of San Francisco since getting out of jail in 2016, fortified his shelter with tarps and zip ties and took in his girlfriend after her tent flooded.

“The wind has been treacherous, but you just got to bundle up and make sure you stay dry,” Harris mentioned. “Rain is part of life. It’s going to be sunny. It’s going to rain. I just got to strap my boots up and not give up.”

The storms have created what Newsom referred to as a “weather whiplash,” swinging from an epic drought to the opposite excessive and arriving with a fury and frequency prone to create issues effectively into subsequent week.

While a lot of the state stays in excessive or extreme drought, in accordance with the U.S. Drought Monitor, the state mentioned the water content material within the snowpack is greater than double the common.

“It’s fair to say that what we’re seeing right now in California will certainly help to relieve some of the localized aspects of drought, but will not resolve the long-term drought challenges,” mentioned Rick Spinrad, administrator of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

The newest atmospheric river — an extended plume of moisture stretching out into the Pacific that may drop staggering quantities of rain and snow — started easing in some areas. But extra rain was forecast to reach Wednesday in Northern California, after which an extended storm system was predicted to final from Friday till Jan. 17.

Debris from a mudslide blocks a avenue within the Laurel Canyon part of Los Angeles on Tuesday. (AP Photo/Michael R. Blood)

The climate service issued a flood watch via Tuesday for your entire San Francisco Bay Area, together with the Sacramento Valley and Monterey Bay. Areas hit by wildfires lately confronted the potential for mud and particles sliding down naked hillsides.

Gusts as excessive as 88 miles per hour (141 kilometers per hour) have been recorded within the mountains north of Los Angeles, and rainfall was anticipated to achieve as much as half an inch (1.27 centimeters) per hour. Tornadoes that had been forecast by no means materialized.

In South San Francisco, excessive winds ripped a part of the roof off a big house constructing.

The squalls and flooding have pressured faculty cancellations in some communities and intermittently shut down sections of main roadways which have flooded or been blocked by timber, rocks and landslides.

Sinkholes swallowed up two vehicles on a Los Angeles avenue, trapping two motorists who have been rescued, and broken 15 properties within the rural Santa Barbara County group of Orcutt.

In the rich seaside group of Montecito, 80 miles (128 kilometers) northwest of Los Angeles, evacuation orders have been lifted Tuesday for about 10,000 individuals, together with Prince Harry, Oprah Winfrey and different celebrities. The group had been informed to evacuate on the fifth anniversary of a mudslide that killed 23 individuals and destroyed greater than 100 properties.