A record-setting holiday rainstorm disrupted much of California on Christmas, swamping major highways, shutting down airport runways and prompting tornado warnings. Officials cautioned that driving to holiday celebrations on slick and muddy roads could turn deadly.
Sun and blue skies emerged across much of the state on Thursday afternoon, but forecasters warned it could be a brief reprieve. An inch or more of rain could still fall in parts of the state overnight, including in cities that set records for Christmas Eve rainfall on Wednesday.
Heavy downpours flooded streets in Northern California, spawned mudslides in the burn scars from Southern California wildfires and dumped wet snow across the Sierra Nevada. Residents in some mountain communities spent all of Christmas under evacuation orders.
The National Weather Service issued a tornado warning for the Santa Cruz area on Thursday afternoon because a fast-rotating column of air appeared to be forming over Pacific Ocean. But it lost strength as it reached land, said Brayden Murdock, a meteorologist with agency’s Bay Area office, and there have been no reports of tornadoes touching down.
Two smaller waves of rain were on their way to the state on Thursday, forecasters said. The first was expected to drop up to 1.5 inches on San Luis Obispo, Santa Barbara and Ventura counties during the daytime, with smaller amounts in Los Angeles County and more in the mountains.
The second wave was expected to arrive Thursday evening and last until noon on Friday, bringing another 1.5 inches of rain to Los Angeles, and twice that in the mountains.
In the Bay Area, coastal mountain ranges, such as the Santa Cruz Mountains and Diablo Range, were at particular risk of heavy downpours, Mr. Murdock said, adding, “There’s going to be some spots that are seeing a lot more rainfall than others.”
More than 102,000 customers in California were without power at 2 p.m. local time on Thursday, according to the utility tracking site PowerOutage.us, down from 160,000 or so at dawn on Christmas morning. The outages were scattered mainly across Northern California and the mountains, where power crews were out working to repair lines.
In the Woodland Hills neighborhood of Los Angeles, Linda Mendez got her power back shortly before noon, rescuing the chance for a Christmas feast at home with her mother, who is about to turn 99. “We’re going to see what we can salvage for dinner after I mop up the water leaking out of the refrigerator,” Ms. Mendez said in a text after power was restored.
She could see her neighbors across the street, who moved to Woodland Hills after losing their Malibu home to to the fires in January, charging their phones in their car as they waited for electricity to be restored. “I really feel bad for them,” Ms. Mendez said, adding, “They’re trying to make the best of Christmas for this year for their family, and this is happening.”
Some of the heaviest rain fell Wednesday in the Southern California counties of Ventura and San Bernardino, where fire crews evacuated homes and rushing debris flows shut down Highway 2 east of Los Angeles. Downpours also flooded parts of Interstate 5 in the San Fernando Valley, though the highway had reopened by Thursday morning.
The California Highway Patrol received more than 100 reports of roadway flooding in Los Angeles County alone by Christmas morning, said Luis Quintero, an agency spokesman.
The airport reopened on Thursday in Santa Barbara, where more than three inches of rain had fallen — a daily record for Dec. 24 — forcing an overnight closure. Major airports were in better shape, though inbound flights to San Francisco were delayed about two hours on average because of high winds on Thursday afternoon, according to the F.A.A.
In Wrightwood, a ski resort town of about 5,000 in the mountains of San Bernardino County, crews went door to door on Christmas Eve to evacuate people from their homes and vehicles, as the rain and debris flow overwhelmed roadways. Sarah Bailey, who has lived in the Wrightwood area for more than two decades, called it “the worst flooding I’ve seen.”
The entire town remained under a shelter-in-place warning on Christmas Day, with officials imploring residents not to go out and risk blocking emergency vehicles.
The heavy rain is the result of a series of atmospheric rivers — large plumes of moisture drawn from the ocean — that have been flowing over California for the past week. Climate change also plays a factor: A warmer atmosphere holds more water, making intense rainstorms and flooding more common, and heaping one threat on top of another.
Much of the Los Angeles region was under a “moderate” risk for excessive rain on Thursday, according to the Weather Service. But with record daily rainfall totals for Dec. 24 already broken in Los Angeles, Burbank and several other spots, even moderate rainfall could cause mudslides on wet hills and drive rivers and streams over their banks.
At a time when many families travel to be together for the holidays, officials were warning them of dangerous road conditions. “I am urging all Angelenos to stay safe and be extremely careful on the roads if you absolutely must travel,” Mayor Karen Bass of Los Angeles said in a statement on Wednesday. “Please do not take this storm lightly.”
Some residents spent Christmas Eve in evacuation shelters after the authorities ordered mandatory evacuations in parts of Orange, Ventura, Los Angeles and San Bernardino Counties. Gov. Gavin Newsom declared a state of emergency in those counties on Thursday, as well as in Riverside and Shasta counties.
Reporting was contributed by Francesca Regalado, Thomas Gibbons-Neff, Matthew Mpoke Bigg, Gabe Castro-Root and John Keefe.
Soumya Karlamangla is a Times reporter who covers California. She is based in the Bay Area.
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