High winds, torrential rains lash California, killing at least two

Reuters:

SACRAMENTO, Calif., Jan 5 – A massive Pacific storm unleashed high winds, torrential rains and heavy snow across California for a second day on Thursday, knocking out power to tens of thousands of homes and disrupting road travel with flash floods, rock slides and toppled trees.

At least two fatalities have been reported since Wednesday, one of them a toddler killed by a fallen redwood crushing a mobile home in northern California.

And while the extent of flooding and property losses was less dire than many had predicted by the time the storm began tapering off late on Thursday, forecasters warned that more was soon to come.

The storm was powered by two overlapping phenomena – an immense airborne stream of dense moisture from the ocean called an atmospheric river, and a sprawling, hurricane-force low-pressure system known as a bomb cyclone.