3 dead as storm eases in Southern California

Sign up for one of our email newsletters.Updated 11 hours ago LOS ANGELES — A huge Pacific storm that parked itself over Southern California and unloaded, ravaging roads, opening sinkholes and leading to the deaths of at least three people, eased off Saturday....

3 dead as storm eases in Southern California

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Updated 11 hours ago

LOS ANGELES — A huge Pacific storm that parked itself over Southern California and unloaded, ravaging roads, opening sinkholes and leading to the deaths of at least three people, eased off Saturday. But it was only a temporary reprieve as new storms took aim farther north.

The National Weather Service predicted drying weather through Sunday followed by the return of wet weather in the region. But while flash-flood watches for Southern California were canceled, Northern California and the San Francisco Bay Area were facing a weekend return of heavy rain and winds that lashed them earlier in the week before the storm moves out.

“Stronger southerly winds and widespread flooding will be likely as an atmospheric river (of moisture) takes aim somewhere along the central California Coast,” a weather statement warned.

The approaching rain could cause more problems in the far north, where damage to spillways of the Lake Oroville dam forced the evacuation of 188,000 people last weekend. As of Saturday, the lake's water elevation had fallen more than 45 feet.

Meanwhile, authorities up and down the state were dealing with the fallout, including overflowing creeks, mudslide threats in foothill areas denuded by previous fires, road collapses and hundreds of toppled trees in neighborhoods.

California appeared to dodge any major disasters, but in the desert town of Victorville, several cars were washed down a flooded street, and one man was found dead in a submerged vehicle after others were rescued, San Bernardino County fire spokesman Eric Sherwin said.

And in the Sherman Oaks area of Los Angeles, a man was electrocuted when a tree falling in heavy rain downed power lines that hit his car.

On Saturday, searchers found the body of a man in his 20s who was swept down a rain-swollen gully in Thousand Oaks a day earlier. KCBS-TV reported that the body was found in Arroyo Conejo Creek.

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