Authorities ordered more than 1,500 people to evacuate early Saturday from a Northern California agricultural community famous for its strawberry crop after the Pajaro River’s levee was breached by flooding from a new atmospheric river pummeling the state.
Monterey County officials on Saturday said the break in the levee – upstream from the unincorporated community of Pajaro along California’s Central Coast – is about 100 feet wide. Crews had gone door to door Friday afternoon to urge residents to leave before the rains came but some stayed and had to be pulled from floodwaters early Saturday.
First responders and the California National Guard rescued more than 50 people overnight. One video showed a member of the Guard helping a driver out of a car trapped by water up to their waists.
“We were hoping to avoid and prevent this situation, but the worst case scenario has arrived with the Pajaro River overtopping and levee breaching at about midnight,” wrote Luis Alejo, chair of the Monterey County Board of Supervisors, on Twitter.
Alejo called the flooding “massive” saying it has impacted Pajaro’s 1,700 residents – many of them Latino farmworkers – and that the damage will take months to repair.
The Pajaro River separates the counties of Santa Cruz and Monterey in the area that flooded Saturday.
Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom has declared emergencies in 34 counties in recent weeks, and the Biden administration approved a presidential disaster declaration for some on Friday morning, a move that will bring more federal assistance.
The atmospheric river, known as a”Pineapple Expres” because it brought warm subtropical moisture across the Pacific from near Hawaii, was melting lower parts of the huge snowpack built in California’s mountains.
Snow levels in the Sierra Nevada, which provides about a third of the state’s water supply, are more than 180% of the April 1 average, when it is historically at its peak. Officials reported 32 inches of snow had fallen by Saturday morning at the Mount Rose ski resort on the edge of Reno, Nevada.
The snowpack at high elevations is so massive it was expected to be able to absorb the rain, but snow below 4,000 feet could start to melt, potentially contributing to flooding, forecasters said.
State transportation officials said Friday they removed so much snow from the roadways in February that it would be enough to fill the iconic Rose Bowl 100 times.
Lake Oroville – one of the most important reservoirs in the state and home to the nation’s tallest dam – has so much water that officials on Friday opened the dam’s spillways for the first time since April 2019. The reservoir’s water has risen 180 feet since Dec. 1. Of the state’s 17 major reservoirs, seven are still below their historical averages this year.
State water managers were also grappling with the best way to use the storms to help emerge from a severe drought. On Friday, Newsom signed an executive order making it easier for farmers and water agencies to use floodwater to refill underground aquifers. Groundwater provides on average about 41% of the state’s supply each year. But many of these underground basins have been overdrawn in recent years.
Dazio reported from Los Angeles.
Topics California Windstorm
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