As storms continue to rattle The Golden State, officials in California have shared that the latest have left at least five people dead and more than 80,000 without power.
Officials across the state have confirmed that the storm, which was just the latest to bring damaging winds, heavy rain, and snow to the state, took the life of at least five people, according to a New York Times report.
Two of the deaths in the state were caused by high winds forcing large trees in the area to topple over.
The Times spoke with a spokesperson for the California Highway Patrol, who shared that a man in San Mateo County was killed when a tree fell on his car.
A tweet from the Contra Costa Fire Protection District, which operates in the San Francisco area, shared that on Tuesday, one of the trees fell onto a car while it was traveling, killing a passenger and causing injuries to the driver.
In Lake Merritt, another tree toppled over onto a homeless man’s tent, taking his life and marking the third person in the state to be killed by a falling tree during the storm.
The Times also reported that another two people were killed in the Bay Area from falling trees, resulting in at least five people being killed and four injured altogether.
Winds in some parts of the state reached approximately 75 miles per hour. In Los Angeles, the National Weather Service confirmed that two tornadoes touched down in the area this week.
On the Magic Mountain Truck Trail, located just outside Los Angeles, winds were reported to have hit triple digits, with gusts coming in at 102 miles per hour.
The storm damage also resulted in more than 80,000 residents throughout the state losing power as of Wednesday evening, according to PowerOutage.us. That number had been cut in half to just over 40,000 by Thursday morning.
Storms have battered the state since almost the beginning of the year, causing multiple deaths and damage to property up the western coast.
However, the storms have had a plus side, helping much of the state with its water issues that were reaching historic drought records.
Now, precipitation throughout the last month has resulted in almost two-thirds of the state no longer being in a drought, and the worst parts of the state dropping from being classified in “exceptional drought” to only being “severe drought.”
Related
Related
