Parking issues: A second-storey walkway to apartment units is shown after it collapsed during heavy rain in Long Beach, California. A major storm that pummelled northern California and the Pacific Northwest with heavy rain and high winds and killed two people moved south overnight, prompting evacuation orders in areas prone to floods and mud flows.

AFP

San Francisco

The US Pacific coast’s most ferocious storm in years moved south yesterday, bringing hurricane force winds and heavy downpours to southern California one day after claiming two lives in the Northwest.

News reports said a homeless man and a young boy were killed by falling trees in the state of Oregon.

Severe flooding, mudslides and high winds – some gusting up to 140mph – wreaked havoc as the unusually powerful storm bore down the California coastline, buffeting Los Angeles and San Diego.

The Los Angeles Times newspaper said that the storm trapped some residents inside their homes and cars, and led officials to issue mass evacuations of some areas, which also were hit by widespread power outages.

The National Weather Service said that among southern California’s hardest hit areas were foothills denuded of vegetation after being scorched by wildfires over the past few years, and which now are particularly prone to mudslides.

“Flash flooding and debris flows will be a particular threat in and below the recently burned areas,” the National Weather Service (NWS) said in a bulletin yesterday.

The NWS predicted heavy rainfall throughout the day in normally sunny southern California, with “hourly rainfall rates between one-half and one-and-one-half inches”.

The inclement weather sweeping into the region was being carried on a current with the unlikely name “Pineapple Express” – an intense stream of moisture stretching from Hawaii to the US West Coast.

“It’s clearly the strongest storm to impact the West Coast in the last three years,” Todd Morris, a spokesman for the NWS, told AFP.

Blizzard warnings were issued for mountainous areas, the first such alerts since 2008, with up to 1m (3’) of snow expected.

The storm was felt as far north as Canada, where it knocked out power to 70,000 homes and businesses on Canada’s Pacific Coast overnight after dumping nearly five inches of rain on the region.

Hundreds of flights were cancelled on Thursday at San Francisco International Airport, but Los Angeles International Airport reported no increase in major delays yesterday.

The heavy precipitation comes with California already saturated by several weeks of punishing rains.

Even though the rains had stopped in northern California, rising flood waters prompted officials to keep schools shuttered and roads closed.

Tens of thousands of people temporarily lost power in the storm, which blew in snow, heavy rain and ferocious winds, but the lights were back on for most northern California customers by Thursday.

The American Red Cross, working with local officials, opened emergency shelters across the, providing warm meals and lodging to those who lost power in the storm.

Flashflood watches and warnings were in place all along the western United States from the Pacific northwest to San Diego at the Golden State’s southernmost tip.

US weather experts said the last time the region was hit by such heavy rainfall was in October 2009.

Experts said that, while rain was welcome to compensate for California’s historic drought, it would take a lot more to have a real impact.

“The current storms will not alleviate the drought, unfortunately,” Stephanie Pincetl, an environmental studies professor at the University of California Los Angeles (UCLA), told AFP. “We will need several years of unusually high rainfall.”