A person walks in the rain as a powerful long-duration atmospheric river storm, the second in less than a week, impacts California on Sunday in Santa Barbara, California. The storm is delivering potential for widespread flooding, landslides and power outages while dropping heavy rain and snow across the region.
A rare weather event that brought catastrophic flooding and wind gusts exceeding 100 miles per hour to California has already incapacitated much of the state — including two of the richest and most developed parts of the country, which still lack the infrastructure needed to withstand such extreme weather.
In the nation’s high-tech hub of Northern California, nearly 1 million households suffered blackouts Sunday evening, according to Pacific Gas & Electric. More than 456,000 remained without electricity, including nearly a quarter-million in the San Francisco Bay Area, as of 8 a.m. local time Monday. Including those outside PG&E’s coverage area, more than 500,000 people statewide were still in the dark, data from the website PowerOutage.us .