March 14, 2023 - Snow, rain and flooding pummel US on both coasts

Workers are making emergency repairs to the Pajaro River levee in Monterey County, California, as approximately 21,000 people are under an evacuation order or warning, county officials said.

Contractors are filling the gaps in the levee and have approximately 20 feet to go, said Shaunna Murray, the senior water resources engineer at the Water Resources Agency.

This temporary fix will stabilize the gap so that water flows out at a reduced rate, she said, adding officials hope the work will be completed by the end of Tuesday or on Wednesday. The full repair of the levee will take several additional weeks after this first repair is done, she added.   

An additional breach has occurred near Highway 1 and is flowing out to the ocean, but the breach happened naturally and is helping to lower the flood level, Murray said.  

In Pajaro, approximately 2,000 people evacuated with 239 rescues conducted by boat or high-water vehicles, Monterey County Sheriff Tina Nieto said during the press conference. In Aroyo Seco, approximately 350 people evacuated with approximately 20 to 40 residents sheltering in place, according to the sheriff.   

Emergency responders are on the scene at a high-rise building in downtown San Francisco after glass from a window fell due to high winds, San Francisco Fire Captain Jonathan Baxter told CNN.

Both of the windows are located on the 43rd floor at the former Bank of America building which is a 52-story high-rise, Baxter said.

There are no injuries and officials are not allowing anyone on the streets surrounding the building, Baxter noted.

In a tweet, the fire department warned residents to shelter in place due to the falling glass.

High winds have been reported across northern California on Tuesday. San Francisco International Airport reported lengthy ground stops due to sustained winds of 40 to 50 mph with gusts fairly consistently topping 60 mph.

The ongoing storm system impacting the state of California has left nearly 360,000 customers without power as of Tuesday afternoon, according to PowerOutage.US.

Santa Clara County, which is south of San Francisco, is experiencing the majority of the outages with 130,447 customers without power, the data from PowerOutage.US said. 

A significant portion of the Northeast, from upstate New York through New England, has received 1 to 2 feet of snow in the past 24 hours, with some locations topping 3 feet.  

The snow will remain moderate to heavy in many of these same areas through the evening before the snow begins to taper off overnight. Although minimal additional snowfall is expected after sunrise Wednesday, winds will be slower to ease. Areas from the mid-Atlantic through the entire Northeast will experience wind gusts of 30 to 45 mph through Wednesday afternoon.

Top snow totals from the National Weather Service as of 6 pm EDT:

Millions of people in California were under flood alerts Tuesday as an atmospheric river makes its way over a region already drenched by rain.

An atmospheric river is a plume of moisture that helps carry saturated air from the tropics to higher latitudes, delivering unrelenting rain or snow. Typically 250 to 375 miles wide, atmospheric rivers can stretch more than a thousand miles long, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration says.

Atmospheric rivers aren't a new phenomenon — in the western US, they account for 30% to 50% of annual precipitation, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. However, the eastern half of the US also experiences atmospheric rivers, with moisture pulled from the Gulf of Mexico.

While atmospheric rivers are an incredibly important source of rainfall, they can also bring flash flooding, mudslides and landslides, sometimes killing people and destroying property.

Impact of climate change: As the world warms, the atmosphere can hold more moisture – which will lead to rainier atmospheric river events.

“It’s expected that as the air temperatures increase, the air can hold more water vapor, and therefore any storms that are comprised of water vapor will have more of it,” said Jason Cordeira, associate professor of meteorology at Plymouth State University.

Atmospheric rivers will be “significantly longer and wider than the ones we observe today, leading to more frequent atmospheric river conditions in affected areas,” a NASA-led study found. The frequency of the most intense atmospheric rivers will likely double, the study found.

A ground delay remains in effect at San Francisco International Airport on Tuesday afternoon due to winds, airport spokesman Doug Yakel said.

The average delay is 155 minutes, the Federal Aviation Administration said.

The airport has been reporting sustained winds of 40 to 50 mph with gusts fairly consistently topping 60 mph over the past 3 to 4 hours, according to CNN Weather. 

The highest gust today has been a hurricane-force 74 mph, occurring just before noon local time.

CNN Weather’s Taylor Ward contributed to this report.

More than 239 people have been rescued in the Pajaro area in Monterey County, California, after heavy rain created flooding and hazardous conditions on the west coast, Monterey County Sheriff Tina Nieto said.

Speaking at a news conference Tuesday, she said officials use high-water vehicles and boats to perform those rescues. More than 2,000 people have also been evacuated from the Pajaro area which was hit hard by flooding, Nieto said.

Nieto added that the sheriff’s office does not have the resources to force people to evacuate, but pleaded for residents to listen to warnings and guidance, stressing the danger of affected areas.

She cautioned people still in Pajaro not to drink the water, adding that environmental officials are working to make sure it is safe.

For people who were evacuated and displaced from their homes, some local hotels have been taking in families, said Rob O’Keefe from the Monterey Convention and Visitors Bureau.

More than 30 hotels are participating in the evacuation program, he said, but some issues are arising when the power goes out. O'Keefe said they have also reached out to hotels in neighboring counties that still have electricity to try to work around that problem.

The storm system that is impacting California has left over 250,000 customers without power on Tuesday afternoon, according to PowerOutage.US.

Santa Clara County which is south of San Francisco is experiencing the majority of the outages with more than 74,000 customers without power, the data shows. 

Residents in California are continuing to deal with yet another storm system that is bringing the risk of devastating floods across the state.

This has led various municipalities to issue either evacuation warnings or evacuation orders.

California Governor's Office of Emergency Services (Cal OES) spokesman Gustavo Ortiz told CNN that as of Tuesday morning, there were 71,678 people under evacuation warnings and 26,911 people under evacuation orders.

According to Ortiz, most of these evacuations are in Monterey County.

Warning vs. order, what's the difference?:

There are nearly 30 million people in California who are under a flood threat from the atmospheric river storm system that is battering the state.

Note: These stats are constantly changing as this is an active weather system impacting the state.

CNN’s Taylor Ward contributed to this report.