WATSONVILLE, Calif. — Evacuation orders were in force, announced late on Thursday through social media posts and over speakers used by the local police department. Another storm was approaching. Residents needed to get to safety.
As he had done during the previous storm, Cesar Leon, 39, the director of the Salvation Army shelter in the small agricultural city of Watsonville, helped bus his patrons to an emergency setup at the nearby fairgrounds.
This time around, though, the sentiment was different, he said: “They didn’t want to leave, because they just did it a month ago.”
It has been a brutal winter for much of California, where areas beleaguered by a succession of atmospheric rivers — storms named for their long narrow shape and the immense amount of water they carry — have grown weary of living under the constant specter of flooding.
Yet another powerful storm system pummeled the state on Friday, particularly the central region. The storm stranded residents, washed away portions of roads, turned snow into icy sludge, prompted evacuations, caused power outages and contributed to at least one death. President Biden approved an emergency declaration request from Gov. Gavin Newsom, authorizing the Federal Emergency Management Agency to coordinate relief efforts in more than 30 counties.
In places like Watsonville, a city of about 50,000 in Santa Cruz County accustomed to fog and cool temperatures, there has been a shudder of “not again” every time inclement weather approaches.
“People start panicking this time of year,” said Alex Lopez, 54, who is employed at a local farm that harvests lettuce and broccoli. “It’s time to work, not be at home. People are losing money.”
Mr. Lopez, who grew up in the area, recalled that when storms would hit a few decades ago, he would play in the water, floating down the river in an inner tube.
The onslaught of recent storms over the last few months has taken a toll on crops and on the labor force. The wet winter has meant that farmers’ fertilizing and harvesting schedules have been thrown off. Mr. Lopez has noticed that the lettuce is growing too slowly.
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“The last two floods, it was all over the fields and all of the roads,” he said. “You couldn’t go through.”
The latest storm began Thursday night with heavy rain in the Bay Area, and was believed to have been a factor in the collapse of the roof of an Oakland warehouse used by Peet’s Coffee. One male employee died and a female employee was injured.
Nancy Ward, director of the California Governor’s Office of Emergency Services, said that about 9,400 people across the state were under evacuation orders, and more than 54,000 utility customers were without power.
Monterey, a onetime fishing town now better known for its sunbathing California sea lions and famed aquarium, had been off line since Thursday evening, with no working traffic lights and only dark windows at businesses and homes. Intense rain and howling wind brought down some trees and branches there overnight.
Palisades Tahoe, a popular ski resort north of Lake Tahoe where the 1960 Winter Olympics were held, announced on Twitter that it would close on Friday “due to high avalanche danger and flooding.” The resort said that ridge-top winds had reached 139 miles an hour, and that there was rain falling at elevations as high as 8,500 feet — evidence of the atmospheric river’s warm precipitation, after weeks of blizzards in the region.
Crews in South Lake Tahoe have spent the week clearing snow from roads, but for a while on Friday, they had to focus on removing the snow and ice that was blocking storm drains and causing flooding around the city.
When the storm moved south, residents of an enormous swath of the central region of the state were on high alert for flash flooding.
In the tiny coastal town of Soquel, hundreds of residents were trapped when a creek overflowed and washed away part of a main road that was the only access route for a mountain community.
About 150 miles inland in Fresno County, dark skies extended over fields drowned in torrents of rain. Farm crews worked to pump water away from the crops. An R.V. park was evacuated because of flooding from the rapidly moving Kings River.
Planada, a small town in Merced County that suffered some of the worst flooding from California’s storms in January, was also under an evacuation order. Two months ago, hundreds of houses and cars in the small farmworkers’ community were destroyed during an atmospheric river.
“Everybody is afraid right now,” said Rodrigo Espinosa, a county supervisor who represents Planada, nine miles east of Merced. “They don’t want it to happen again.”
Officials said that flood control dams on major creeks near Planada were expected to reach their maximum capacity by Friday evening.
The compounding of inclement weather in a drought-riddled state led to Mr. Newsom announcing an executive order on Friday that would take advantage of California’s enormous snowpack and at least two more atmospheric rivers that are expected to arrive in the next few days. By easing state rules, the order allows local water agencies to more easily redirect floodwater to replenish the state’s severely depleted groundwater supplies.
The move comes after criticism that California had flushed trillions of gallons of water out to sea during repeated deluges of rain this winter. Water agencies and experts say that the state’s strict rules limiting who can take water from streams and creeks have prohibited local agencies from capturing the excess flows, even though stored water is desperately needed to prepare for the state’s next dry period. The executive order took effect on Friday and will last through June 10.
In Southern California, the rain had many residents of the San Bernardino Mountains bracing for what it might do to the thick blankets of snow that covered rooftops. A historic amount of snow fell in the mountains over the past two weeks, clogging roads and trapping residents. Homeowners spent part of the week attempting to clear off what they could before the rain added weight to the rooftop snow, potentially causing collapses.
By Friday afternoon, the rainfall had eased up in Watsonville, where sandbags lined garage doors and many people had stayed home despite the evacuation order. There was an air of calm in the town, and even some curiosity, with residents appearing at the edges of levees to take a peek at the roiling floodwaters.
On the outskirts of the city, some farmers had emerged to begin sweeping away the mud and debris blocking the roads that lead to their strawberry farms and apple orchards.
The fields, lined with furrows, had once again become vast pools of water.
Soumya Karlamangla, Jesus Jiménez, Holly Secon, Vik Jolly, Jill Cowan, Alex Hoeft and Judson Jones contributed reporting.
