California storm: Power outages and mudslides as deadly flooding sweeps through waterlogged state

Several private levees in Monterey County have been breached, prompting evacuation orders from the Monterey County Sheriff's Office.

The levees were privately owned and are not maintained by the county, CBS San Francisco reported.

To cope with widespread damage to its power grid, more than 5,000 PG&E workers were responding to storm-related issues, including crews brought in from Southern California, Oregon, Idaho, Utah, Wyoming, New Mexico, Colorado, Washington, Wisconsin and Canada, CBS San Francisco reported.

"This is the largest response effort PG&E has ever assembled for a winter storm event," PG&E COO Adam Wright said. 

Mudslides in remote Matilija Canyon buried one house completely and cut off the only road to nearby Ojai.  

"We're all stuck out here," said Brian Briggs.

Briggs described a scary night when the canyon creek began to flood people's yards and the surrounding hills — stripped of vegetation in the 2017 Thomas Fire — began to tumble down in the dark.

Mudflows dragged sheds, gazebos and outhouses into the creek, he said. After helping neighbors get to higher ground, he returned home to find his fence destroyed by waist-deep mud.

A helicopter dropped 10 sheriff's deputies Tuesday to help the residents of dozens of homes in the canyon and Briggs said he was hoping to be airlifted out.  

Solano County has issued a local emergency proclamation.

The Solano County Sheriff's Office said that the severe weather has led to downed trees and utilities, which have caused power losses and road closures.

 "We continue to experience flooding of roadways and widespread outages and will have rain throughout the rest of the week with another atmospheric river by late Friday, January 13, into next week," the sheriff's office said in a statement on Tuesday. "Soil conditions remain saturated and additional rains will increase the likelihood of further damage throughout the county. There is no estimated cost of damage currently and damage assessments are on-going."

Some forecasters are predicting as much as 22 trillion gallons of water will have fallen on drought-stricken California when the storms are finally over. That's more than enough water to fill Lake Powell and Lake Mead, two major reservoirs.

But most of the water won't be captured in reservoirs. It will be lost to runoff that goes to the ocean.

"The challenge there is getting the water from outfalls … or rivers and into the groundwater," said Jenny Pensky, a hydrogeologist at the University of California Santa Cruz. "And we just don't quite have the infrastructure for that."

With all the sewage, bacteria and debris in the storm runoff, the water would also have to be treated before it could be used.  

The California Department of Education announced that 427 public and public charter schools were closed statewide on Tuesday, with 185,513 students missing school as the state deals with extreme weather conditions.

The count does not include private schools.

The storm's death toll reached at least 17 on Tuesday, according to Gov. Gavin Newsom. That was an increase from the 14 reported deaths Monday.

Officials spent seven hours Monday unsuccessfully searching for a 5-year-old boy who was swept away in floodwaters, turning up only his shoe, CBS Los Angeles reported. The child was swept from his mother's stranded truck downstream and likely carried into a river, said an official with Cal Fire/San Luis Obispo County Fire Department.

A sinkhole opened up on a road in the Los Angeles neighborhood of Chatsworth. Two people were able to flee as it swallowed a car and a pickup truck. Firefighters rescued two others trapped in their car by the sinkhole, which reached at least 15 feet deep on Monday.

This sinkhole appeared to deepen overnight, reported CBS Los Angeles, and the vehicles were still visible Tuesday morning, albeit covered in mud.

Firefighters said the sinkhole in the suburban neighborhood had compromised the entire road.

A sinkhole also damaged at least 15 homes in Orcutt, in Santa Barbara County, forcing evacuations, The Associated Press reported.

Officials ordered all residents of Montecito to evacuate Monday. The 8,600-person community in Santa Barbara County is known for its famous residents, who reportedly include Prince Harry and Meghan, football star Troy Aikman, singer Ariana Grande, actors Jennifer Aniston and Gwyneth Paltrow, Oprah, and comedian Larry David, among others. 

Creeks and roads were flooded, said Santa Barbara County Sheriff Bill Brown in the wake of Monday's decision, which he said was "based on the continuing high rate of rainfall with no indication that that is going to change before nightfall." 

Schools in the community were closed Tuesday.

One of Montecito's famous residents, comedian Ellen DeGeneres, took to Instagram on Tuesday to show the raging creek next to her house.

DeGeneres said that the creek, which "never flows, ever," is about nine feet higher than normal and is expected to rise another two feet. She said that she is on higher ground and was told to shelter in place during the community's evacuation.  

Some areas saw mudslides close roads and cover cars starting Monday. In Ventura County, north of Los Angeles, mudslides trapped a big rig and other vehicles on State Route 126, reported CBS Los Angeles. The Associated Press reported the rain washed 3 feet of mud and rock across the road.

Mudslides were feared in many California communities that saw evacuations, including Montecito, which marked the fifth anniversary Tuesday of deadly mudslides that killed 23 people and destroyed more than 100 homes, and in Ventura County's La Concita, where 10 people died in a 2005 mudslide, The AP reported. Mudslides also damaged homes in the Hollywood Hills.

A driver told KCAL News that a hill collapsed and the mud surrounded his black Audi at around 2 a.m. local time Tuesday, leaving him stuck near Mulholland Drive in Los Angeles on Tuesday morning.

The power was out for nearly 150,000 California customers as of Tuesday afternoon, according to poweroutage.us, which tracks U.S. outages.

While most of those were customers of PG&E, which serves more than 5 million customers in the northern and central parts of the state, municipal utilities in Los Angeles and Sacramento each reported more than 10,000 without power.

The storm didn't just bring rain — higher elevations saw snow, and plenty of it. The California Highway Patrol closed part of I-80 on Tuesday morning amid high winds and whiteout conditions.

Those inches pushed the statewide snowpack to 215% of normal as of Tuesday, according to the state's Department of Water Resources — and nearly to the average for the first quarter of the year.

"Heavy mountain snow and gusty winds will bring periods of whiteout conditions with chain controls and likely road closures through tonight," according to the weather service's Sacramento office.

Mammoth Mountain was closed Tuesday "due to intense snowfall conditions and very dangerous travel in the area," according to the resort's website. The resort saw 32 inches of snow Monday and 22 inches on Tuesday at its main lodge.

And another 18-36 inches could be in store for the University of California-Berkeley's Sierra Snow Lab, which saw more than 9 inches in the last 24 hours.

Heavy snow was also anticipated to continue Tuesday night at high elevations across the West, according to the National Weather Service, meaning some areas could see an additional few feet of snow.