Thousands of Californians fled their homes as severe weather battered the state, leaving one dead, a child missing and massive swaths of power outages Tuesday.
Rains continued to hammer much of California on Tuesday as a fresh low-pressure system barreled toward the state as part of a “parade of cyclones” that prompted a string of rescues Monday.
Homes were flooded, streets transformed into rivers and cars were swamped amid the deluge.
The city of San Francisco told residents on Tuesday to take “shelter and do not travel” for three hours, starting about 12:30 p.m. PT after the National Weather Service issued a flash-flood warning for the region.
High winds forced the closure of Interstate 80, in both directions, near the California-Nevada line.
And in Southern California, several routes in Angeles National Forest were closed.
“We could see more flooding concerns throughout much of the state,” National Weather Service meteorologist Eric Schoening said in a taped message posted by the state’s Office of Emergency Services Tuesday afternoon.
“So keep an eye on the radar, keep an eye on anything from your local media, from your local emergency management and from your local National Weather Service.”
One person was killed Monday in Avila Beach, roughly 180 miles north of Los Angeles, when a vehicle was overtaken by water, said Anita Konopa, an official with the San Luis Obispo County Office of Emergency Services.
A child is also missing after being swept away when floodwaters swamped a vehicle in the northern section of the county, near Paso Robles, according to Scott Jalbert, another official with the agency.
By noon Tuesday, power company workers had whittled the number of homes and businesses in the dark down to 179,000, according to PowerOutage.us.
Sacramento County was one of the hardest hit with about 12,000 customers still without power by the lunch hour, according to the outage tracker.
The rain appeared to be letting up in Beverly Hills on Tuesday afternoon. But organizers of the Golden Globes took no chances and set up tents so that the gray-colored red carpet will remain dry when celebrities arrive.
