A powerful storm known as an atmospheric river swept over California on Thursday, soaking the state with rain and leaving a trail of damage that has become familiar to residents in recent years: fallen trees, flooded roads and snarled travel.
Though the storm was not expected to cause the kind of chaos that was sown by a succession of atmospheric rivers last winter, forecasters and officials urged Californians to stay alert and be ready for an even larger tempest arriving over the weekend.
“We are in full preparation mode,” said Jackie Ruiz, a spokeswoman for the Santa Barbara County Office of Emergency Management.
“We’re definitely encouraging people to stay local, hunker down and if there’s no urgent need to be on the road, stay off the road.”Communities in Santa Barbara County, tucked between the mountains and the sea, are especially vulnerable to flooding and mudslides.
But meteorologists said that significant rainfall from the back-to-back storms was likely to affect almost the whole state.
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