WINDSOR, California — Forecasters in the US warned that another round of winter weather could complicate travel ahead of Thanksgiving, as the states of California and Washington continue to recover from storm damage and power outages.
In California, where a person was found dead in a submerged vehicle on Saturday, authorities braced for more rainfall as they battled flooding and small landslides from a previous storm. Thousands of people in the Pacific Northwest were without power after several days in the dark.
The National Weather Service office in Sacramento, California, has issued a winter storm warning for the state’s Sierra Nevada from Saturday through Tuesday, with heavy snow expected at higher elevations and wind gusts possibly reaching 55 miles per hour. Total snowfall of around 1.2 meters was forecast, with the heaviest accumulations expected on Monday and Tuesday.
The Midwest and Great Lakes regions will see rain and snow on Monday, and the East Coast will be hardest hit over Thanksgiving and Black Friday, forecasters said.
A low-pressure system is expected to bring rain to the southeast early Thursday before moving northeast. Areas from Boston to New York could see rain and high winds, with snowfall possible in parts of northern New Hampshire, northern Maine and the Adirondacks. If the system moves further inland, less snow and more rain could fall in the mountains, forecasters said.
Earlier this week, two people died during the storm arrived in the Pacific Northwest. Hundreds of thousands of people lost power, mostly in the Seattle area, before strong winds swept through Northern California. A rapidly intensifying “ bomb cyclone ‘ that hit the West Coast on Tuesday heavy wind resulting in damage to homes and vehicles.
Rescue crews in Guerneville, California, recovered a body in a vehicle floating in the water around 11:30 a.m. Saturday, Sonoma County Sheriff’s Deputy Rob Dillion said, noting that the deceased was believed to have been a victim of the storm but that there no autopsy had yet taken place. carried out.
Santa Rosa, California, experienced its wettest three-day period on record Friday evening with about 32 inches of rain, the National Weather Service in the Bay Area reported. Vineyards in nearby Windsor, California, were flooded on Saturday.
About 80,000 people in the Seattle area were still without electricity after the strongest weather this season atmospheric rivera long plume of moisture that forms over an ocean and flows over land.
Power came back in the afternoon at Katie Skipper’s home in North Bend, about 30 miles east of Seattle, after being off since Tuesday. She was tired of taking cold showers, heating herself with a wood stove and using a generator to run the refrigerator, but Skipper said those inconveniences paled in comparison to the damage other people suffered, such as from fallen trees.
“That’s really sad and scary,” she said.
Another storm brought rain to New York and New Jersey, where rare wildfires have raged in recent weeks, and heavy snow to northeastern Pennsylvania. The precipitation was expected to help mitigate drought conditions after an exceptionally dry autumn.
“It won’t be drought relief, but it will certainly help if this all melts,” said Bryan Greenblatt, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Binghamton, New York.
Heavy snow fell in northeastern Pennsylvania, including the Pocono Mountains. Higher highs reported up to 17 inches (43 centimeters), with smaller accumulations in valley towns including Scranton and Wilkes-Barre. Fewer than 80,000 customers in 10 provinces were disconnected.
Rainfall in West Virginia put a dent in the state’s worst drought in at least two decades and boosted ski areas preparing to open their slopes in the coming weeks.
___
Associated Press writer Claire Rush in Portland, Oregon, contributed to this report.