A “double storm” hits both coasts of the United States

BETTING À DAY

Heavy rain and snow disrupt the northeastern United States on Tuesday, with power outages and canceled flights, as the west coast also struggles between two storms and an unusually rainy winter .

“Double storm! One on each coast,” warned the US Weather Service (NWS), citing “considerable flooding threats in California,” and “the danger, if not the impossibility, of traveling to the northeast due to snow. and coastal flooding”.

In the northeast, “the most significant impacts are expected until the night of Tuesday to Wednesday” with “heavy snowfall” and “strong winds”, warned the NWS.

Rather rare

This double phenomenon, rather rare in the United States, comes after several extreme weather events, such as a series of storms in January in California, which resulted in the death of 20 people, and very heavy snowfalls in December in Buffalo and its region. , in the northeast, which caused the death of at least 39 people.

While it is difficult to establish a direct link with climate change, scientists regularly explain that warming is increasing the frequency and intensity of extreme weather events.

The storm and high winds cause power outages in the Northeast on Tuesday, affecting more than 240,000 homes, according to the poweroutage.us website.

Among the expected disruptions, flights could be delayed or deleted, New York La Guardia airport warned. 

At Syracuse airport, near the border with Canada, passengers had to be evacuated from a plane that was off its runway and several flights were cancelled.

Schools have been closed in states in Massachusetts — which could see up to two feet of snowfall — and in New Hampshire, where dozens of local elections scheduled for Tuesday have been postponed.

'Excessive rains'

On the west coast, the weather service warns of the “risk of excessive rains in central and southern California”, which could cause further flooding in the coastal state, which has already faced several times of such disturbances in recent weeks.

This weekend, homes were flooded and vehicles submerged after the flood of the Pajaro River, which created a breach in a dike overnight from Friday to Saturday and caused the evacuation of thousands of people.

The most populous state in the country with 39 million inhabitants, California experiences a particularly rainy winter.

< p>The current storm is fed, like most other occurrences this season, by an “atmospheric river”, a gig ancient rain corridor that carries water vapor stored in the tropics, often around Hawaii.