A record-setting holiday rainstorm disrupted parts 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 it was a brief reprieve. Storms returned by evening in some regions, and forecasters said that an inch or more of rain could fall in parts of the state overnight, including in cities that just set records for Christmas Eve rainfall.
Early Thursday, heavy downpours flooded streets in Northern California, spawned mudslides in the burn scars from wildfires in Southern California and dumped wet snow across the Sierra Nevada. Residents in some mountain communities spent all of Christmas under evacuation orders.
A smaller wave of rain arrived before nightfall on Thursday and was expected to drop up to 1.5 inches on San Luis Obispo, Santa Barbara and Ventura Counties, with smaller amounts in Los Angeles County and more in the mountains. A flash flood warning was in effect in the Oxnard area, in Ventura County, until the early evening.
A second wave was expected to arrive later Thursday night and last until noon on Friday, bringing another 1.5 inches of rain to Los Angeles, and twice that in the nearby mountains.
In the Bay Area, coastal mountain ranges, such as the Santa Cruz Mountains and the Diablo Range, were at particular risk of heavy downpours, said Brayden Murdock, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service office there. He added, “There’s going to be some spots that are seeing a lot more rainfall than others.”
More than 72,000 customers in California were without power at 6:30 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.
The hardest-hit area in California this week was Wrightwood, a ski resort town of 5,000 in the mountains of San Bernardino County that was battered Wednesday by storms that sent a torrent of mud, rocks and debris crashing into homes and other buildings. Conditions remain so treacherous that the local power company told residents that an outage there would continue into next week, said Chris Reid, a contractor who lives in town.
“It’s 44 degrees inside our cabin as our only heat source is our fireplace,” Mr. Reid, 54, said in a text message. He and his wife had been snuggling with their three dogs at night to keep warm, he said.
As rain and debris flow overwhelmed roadways in Wrightwood on Christmas Eve, crews raced to evacuate people from their homes and vehicles and laid sandbags to prevent flooding. Helicopters landed on the roofs of houses that were taking on water to rescue people and large animals, such as horses, said Daniel R. Munsey, the fire chief for San Bernardino County.
On Christmas Day, as the heavy rains abated, Chief Munsey said that crews began assessing the damage. Many bridges and roads in Wrightwood are washed out, and some homes are filled with as much as five feet of mud.
“You’re not going to be able to move into these houses anytime soon,” he said. “The impacts on the infrastructure in these communities is just significant.”
Downpours on Wednesday also flooded parts of Interstate 5 in the San Fernando Valley, though the highway had reopened by Thursday morning.
The airport eventually 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 Federal Aviation Administration.
And farther south in San Diego, a tree branch crushed and killed a person during the storm on Thursday, according to the San Diego Fire Department.
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.
As families traveled to be together for the holidays, officials warned 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.”
Ms. Bass said in a Thursday night statement that a limited number of evacuation orders remained in effect in Los Angeles, while those living in three areas near burn scars left behind by the January wildfires were being warned they might have to evacuate.
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 on Thursday in those counties as well as Riverside and Shasta Counties.
Still, the conditions improved enough on Christmas for some families to salvage their holiday celebrations.
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 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.”
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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