California was bracing for another round of rain starting Monday as authorities tried to assess damage from severe flooding along the Central Coast and Central Valley, which stranded dozens of people and entire blocks under water. .
Another atmospheric river will bring new flooding concerns to Northern California beginning Monday and continuing through Tuesday night.
Southern California will see rain Tuesday and Wednesday, with flooding possible in Santa Barbara and San Luis Obispo counties, according to the National Weather Service.
“It doesn’t look like the next atmospheric river event is going to be that strong, but when you have a flood on top of a flood, it just causes a bigger flood,” said Cindy Kobold, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service. “That means the next one could have a bigger impact, because the ground is too saturated and we’re going to have extra rain, with gusty winds.”
The largest impact from the recent storm was in the small town of Pajaro in Monterey County.
A levee failure on the Pajaro River, three miles upstream from the city of Pajaro, caused massive flooding in and around the city and prompted hundreds of evacuations.
The levee breached Friday night, said Nicholas Pasculli, a Monterey County spokesman. Patrols noted “bubbling on adjacent farmland” at 11 p.m., the first sign of trouble.
Thirty minutes later, the dam failed, Pasculli said. As of Saturday morning, he said, “the fault is about 100 feet wide.” Pajaro, with a population of 1,700, mostly farm workers, is under water.
Andrés García, 39, said this was his third evacuation from Pájaro due to the rising river; In addition to January, there was one in 1995, when the town was flooded “even worse” than now.
He, his wife and their 8-year-old daughter left the city early Saturday after a sheriff’s deputy knocked on the door and urged them to evacuate. Garcia said they left before the water got too high and he had no idea about the state of his house.
His neighbor Laura Garcia left after dawn. She showed video of water splashing around her home, lapping up a crib, dining set and shelves.
Andrés García said that many farm workers will be out of work as long as the water remains high and the fields are submerged.
“They can’t do anything while it’s like this,” he said.
Elsewhere in Monterey County, the Salinas River flooded the community of San Ardo, prompting evacuation orders Friday night.
Significant flooding was reported in the Springville area of Tulare County, where officials conducted dozens of water rescues Friday morning, and in Kernville, where the roaring Kern River Surrounded houses and mobile homesspurring evacuations.
Valeriana Lopez, a 55-year-old resident of Tooleville in Tulare County, said floodwater didn’t enter her home, but turned her yard into soft mud. She put up boards to cross the patio and was looking for sandbags to create a walkway.
Sheriff’s deputies went door-to-door Friday night urging residents to be ready to go, Lopez said. But she chose to stay.
“I’m going to trust God, because we can’t do anything,” he said. “We have nowhere to go.”
Ian James contributed to this report.
