Furious rains:
The death toll in floods in the state of California in the western United States rose tonight (between Thursday and Friday) to 18, when heavy rains coming from the North Pacific Ocean swept the country and caused severe flooding.
Much destruction in Santa Cruz, photo: GETTY IMAGES
More than 50,000 people were evacuated from their homes, mainly in the coastal strip between the cities of Los Angeles and San Francisco, and great damage was caused to property and infrastructure.
A private house in California that was flooded due to the stormy weather, photo: AFP
Authorities have begun evacuating the Monterey Peninsula, located in the center of California's coastal strip, for fear that rising rivers nearby will cut the peninsula off from the mainland.
This happened in the great floods of 1995 and thousands of residents remained trapped on an island cut off from the mainland.
Before and after the heavy rains in California, photo: Getty Images
The heavy rains are the result of a climatic phenomenon known as "Atmospheric River" or by its popular name "Pineapple Express", because the phenomenon originates in warm water that forms a sleeve of cloud condensation that lands in the northwest of the United States in the form of heavy rains.
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