Western US rocked by a series of weather extremes
AccuWeather looks back at the wild atmospheric rivers, massive snowstorms and a tropical rainstorm that impacted the western U.S. over the past 13 months.
Transcript
00:00 From mega snowstorms to flooding rain, extreme heat and a tropical rainstorm.
00:06 The Southwest has seen some wild weather in the past 13 months. Extreme heat led
00:13 to power outages in early September 2022. Sacramento hit an all-time record high
00:19 of 116 degrees. Days later, tropical rainstorm K arrived. At the time, K was
00:26 the closest tropical threat from the Pacific to impact Southern California in
00:31 50 years. More than five inches of rain fell, leading to crashes, rock slides and
00:37 flooding that shut down highways. The West Coast was rocked by 14 atmospheric
00:43 rivers. There was flooding in the valleys and blockbuster snowstorms in the
00:48 mountains. Some people were stranded for weeks and roofs collapsed under the
00:53 weight of the snow. Officials say it was one of the largest mountain snowpacks on
00:58 record, filling reservoirs that were running low after years of severe drought.
01:03 The ghost of Lake Tulare returned to the San Joaquin Valley, flooding thousands of
01:09 acres of farmland for the first time in decades.
01:12 Experts say families and businesses need to prepare for a future with more weather
01:18 extremes in the West. We go from flood to drought to wildfire to earthquake and I
01:25 mean that quite seriously. You need to think about all four of those. Living in
01:28 California, that's what the four seasons are and we don't think about that. We
01:32 don't prepare for that well enough. For AccuWeather, I'm Bill Waddell.