Second ‘Pineapple Express’ brings rains,triggering flood, power outages

Second ‘Pineapple Express’ brings rains,triggering flood, power outages

LOS ANGELES — A deadly Pacific storm, the second “Pineapple Express” to sweep the West Coast in less than a week, stalled over Southern California on Monday, unleashing torrential downpours that triggered street flooding and mudslides throughout the region.

Extreme-weather advisories for floods, high wind and winter storm conditions were posted on Monday across parts of California and southwestern Arizona where some 35 million people live.

The National Weather Service documented staggering rainfall amounts from the storm, which lashed Northern California on Sunday with hurricane-force gusts of wind, along with heavy precipitation that intensified as the system moved south on Sunday night and Monday.

READ: US airlines cancel over 2,000 flights due to massive winter storm

The National Weather Service (NWS) said more than 10 inches (25.4 cm) of rain had fallen since Sunday across the Los Angeles area, the nation’s second-largest city, with much more expected before showers were due to taper off on Tuesday.

“Significant flooding is ongoing and expected to expand,” the NWS said in a notice posted online.

The intense rainfall, with heavy snow in high-elevation mountain areas, was carried to California by a storm system meteorologists call an atmospheric river, a vast airborne current of dense moisture funneled inland from the Pacific.

The latest tempest, and a less powerful storm that hit California on Wednesday and Thursday, also qualified as a “Pineapple Express,” a type of atmospheric river originating from the subtropical waters around Hawaii.

Winds gusting to 75 miles per hour (121 kph) on Sunday downed trees and utility lines across the San Francisco Bay Area and California’s Central Coast, knocking out power to roughly 875,000 homes at the storm’s peak in that region.

At least two people were killed by wind-toppled trees on Sunday – an 82-year-old man in the former gold

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