Northern California was preparing for heavy rain, snow and possible flooding on Wednesday as a powerful weather system moving through the West Coast intensified. The storm had knocked out power for 650,000 people in Washington and left at least one person dead.
A powerful atmospheric river, a band of moisture that flows from the Pacific Ocean, was hovering above the Northwest early Wednesday. That moisture, combined with a bomb cyclone off the coast of Oregon and Washington — so-called because it quickly dropped in atmospheric pressure over a short period — is expected to bring damaging winds, life-threatening flooding and large ocean waves to a wide stretch of the West Coast this week.
Heavy rain began drenching the Bay Area early on Wednesday and was expected to continue for several days, with the heaviest rain expected north of I-80 in California. More than a month’s worth of precipitation could fall over the next three to four days, forecasters said.
In the higher elevations of Northern California, heavy snow that could make travel difficult to impossible was falling on Wednesday. Wind and snow were also making travel dangerous in Oregon near the border with California.
Washington State and parts of Western Canada felt the initial impacts on Tuesday night.
Some areas of Washington State received wind gusts of up to 77 miles per hour, the National Weather Service said. Hurricane-strength winds begin at 74 m.p.h. The agency urged drivers to stay off the roads, saying that strong winds were expected until about 4 a.m. local time and could cause widespread power outages.
A woman in her 50s was killed after a large tree fell on a homeless encampment in Lynnwood, Wash., the local fire department said.
In Seattle, a person was rescued after a tree fell onto their vehicle, the fire department said.
About 650,000 electricity customers in the state had no power earlier on Wednesday, according to the site poweroutage.us. The outages affected radio transmissions at the Weather Service’s Seattle office, the agency said.
In Northern California on Wednesday, about 27,000 customers were without power.
The Weather Service issued winter storm and blizzard warnings in and around the Cascade Mountains, and storm warnings off the coast. Those warnings were set to expire early Wednesday.
Parts of Oregon and Northern California were also under high wind and winter storm warnings early Wednesday. Parts of Northern California were under a flood watch until Friday evening. A backcountry avalanche warning was issued for Siskiyou County, Calif., until Thursday afternoon.
Amtrak announced that it had canceled several trains running between Seattle, Oakland, Portland and Spokane through Thursday.
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