Millions of Americans are currently facing record rainfall, potentially “life-thretaening” flooding, and strong winds as an atmospheric river hammers parts of Southern California .
On Sunday, California Governor Gavin Newsom declared a state of emergency across eight counties of San Luis Obispo, Santa Barbara, Ventura, Los Angeles, Orange, Riverside, San Bernardino and San Diego.
In Los Angeles, the emergency covered the arena where stars had gathered for the Grammy Awards on Sunday night.
While it went without a weather -related hitch, the National Weather Service revealed that downtown LA smashed its rainfall record that day, with 4.1 inches falling in a single day in February. The previous record was 2.55 inches recorded back in 1927.
By 5am PST Monday morning, 560,000 Californians were plunged into darkness as the storm downed power lines and brought outages to several counties, according to Poweroutage.us.
The NWS Los Angeles office said that flash flood warnings will continue for Los Angeles County and Ventura County until 9am PST. While LA will continue to be hardest hit on Monday morning, the storm is then forecast to move through the San Diego area by the evening.