Key Facts Of The Day 1/4

Storms and Flooding

• Another powerful atmospheric river storm threatens California with more flooding, landslides, and damaging winds in the next two days.
  • This is the third atmospheric river storm to hit California since December 26, 2022. Already soaked by successive storms, California’s soil has become less absorbent, so even a few inches of rain could make it flood and slide.
    • An atmospheric river that drenched the West Coast on December 26 killed at least five people.
  • The new storm, expected to arrive on Wednesday, will bring up to four inches of rain and winds up to 40 MPH to the valleys, gusting to 60 to 80 MPH in the coastal hills, and heavy snow to the mountains.
  • Flood warnings were in place from Wednesday evening to Thursday in the area north of San Francisco, and flood watches were in effect across Southern California.
  • As of Tuesday night, a mandatory evacuation order was issued in the flood-prone city of Watsonville and Santa Cruz County, south of San Francisco.
  • San Jose and adjacent San Mateo and Santa Cruz counties have declared local emergencies.
• More than 30 million people are under some sort of severe weather threat in the South, with the risk of severe storms stretching from the Florida Panhandle into far southeast Alabama and parts of Georgia and along the East Coast into southeastern Virginia.
  • As the showers and storms push into Georgia and northern Florida, damaging wind gusts, large hail, and tornadoes are possible.
  • The multi-hazard storm – which headed into the central and southern U.S. after battering California with deadly floods – has triggered at least 130 storm reports over the past two days and left a trail of destruction as it barreled across the country.
    • There have been 12 tornado reports, nearly 100 wind reports, and 27 hail reports.
  • In Tennessee, Memphis and Jackson both saw record-breaking rainfall on Tuesday.
• Over 5 million people are under winter weather alerts across the Upper Midwest and Great Lakes, where snow and ice accumulations are expected to affect travel.
  • Heavy snow is expected across parts of the Upper Midwest through Wednesday, while freezing rain and a wintry mix will spread into northern New England by Thursday.

Wildfire

• As of December 23, 2022, there are currently 0 large active wildfires that have burned 0 acres. As of December 23, 2022, 65,818 wildfires have burned 7,472,995 acres across the country.
• Colorado state lawmakers suggest a government-run insurance plan as a last resort for homeowners to protect their property from wildfires, as many homeowners cannot afford high premiums for wildfire coverage.

Extreme Heat

• An extremely warm and moist air mass over the East Coast and Southeast helped fuel the severe weather outbreak across the country.
  • Over 35 daily high-temperature records were broken across the eastern U.S. on Tuesday, with temperatures hitting 81 degrees in Baton Rouge, 77 degrees in Wilmington, and 69 degrees in Washington, DC.
• Mountain snowpack in California is above average, but state officials say it’s too early to know if there will be enough water in spring.
• Two major reservoirs in California, Lake Oroville and Lake Shasta, are each at about 35% capacity.
• The last time the California state water project had a full allocation of water was in 2006.

New Reports and Data

• A January 2023 report found a link between climate change and food insecurity and identified it as a potential threat to Texas’s food supply.
• A December 2022 study found that biology textbooks have poorly incorporated material related to climate change.