The emergency declaration covers more than a dozen counties, including Los Angeles, Sacramento and Santa Clara.
“The President’s action authorizes the Department of Homeland Security, Federal Emergency Management Agency ( FEMA ), to coordinate all disaster relief efforts which have the purpose of alleviating the hardship and suffering caused by the emergency,” the White House said in an announcement Monday.
The declaration came as the National Weather Service cautioned the “heavy rainfall” drenching central California could dump three-to-five inches near the coast, with a slightly less heavy episode poised to arrive Tuesday and impact “locations farther south into southern California.”
“The Sierra Nevada will likely see heavy snow exceeding 6 feet across the higher elevations before the snow tapers off Wednesday morning,” the NWS Weather Prediction Center said. “The cumulative effect of successive heavy rainfall events will lead to additional instances of flooding. This includes rapid water rises, mudslides, and the potential for major river flooding.”
The latest storms follow last week’s bad weather, which caused power outages in thousands of California households and led to multiple deaths. On Sunday, 230,000 customers in Sacramento experienced power outages.
“Flooding from Northern to Central California is expected to be widespread, even catastrophic in some locations around the coastal mountains and the northern and central Sierra,” AccuWeather Meteorologist Joe Bauer said.
“Given saturated ground, much of this water to runoff into rivers where more than a dozen monitored river locations are forecast to be above flood stage, even in the Central Valley.”
Ventura, Santa Cruz, Riverside, San Bernardino and San Mateo are also among the California counties included in Biden’s emergency declaration.
“FEMA is authorized to identify, mobilize, and provide at its discretion, equipment and resources necessary to alleviate the impacts of the emergency,” the White House said.
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