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Impending Doom: Clouds are gathering behind a flooded farm near the town of Chualar, California
Photo: DAVID MCNEW / AFP
US President Joe Biden has declared a state of emergency in the state of California because of the ongoing winter storms.
Late on Saturday evening, he ordered federal aid for recovery and repair work in the affected regions.
Since December 26, at least 19 people have died in flooding, power outages, mudslides and earthworks, the US government said.
A new weather front with heavy rain, snow and gusts hit the coast on Saturday.
In some regions, 50 percent of the average amount of precipitation for a whole year was registered within a few days.
The latest in a series of storms swept through an already hard-hit California with heavy rain on Saturday, causing flooding.
Fields and roads were flooded in many places, and power lines were damaged.
Around 12:30 a.m. on Sunday night (CET), around 20,000 households had no electricity, according to the website poweroutage.us.
Catastrophic floods on the Salinas River
"We're not done yet," warned the governor of the US state, Gavin Newsom, on Saturday after visiting those affected.
He warned to remain "vigilant."
Almost 26 million Californians were still affected by flood warnings on Saturday evening, according to the US weather service NWS.
Tens of thousands of people were called to evacuate their homes.
"Catastrophic flooding" was forecast for an area on the Salinas River, a major agricultural region south of the metropolitan San Francisco Bay Area.
According to a journalist from the AFP news agency, the river burst its banks in many places and flooded fields.
In the mountains, the precipitation led to heavy snowfall.
The authorities warned of the danger of avalanches.
Struggling in the aftermath of decades of drought, California has been suffering from winter storms for weeks, with rainfall and snow levels hitting some areas in 150 years.
nis/AFP/Reuters
