A powerful atmospheric river weather system has mostly moved through California but not before causing at least seven deaths and dousing much of the state.
Among the dead was a seven-year-old girl who was swept into the ocean by waves estimated up to 20ft at a state beach on Friday. The girl’s father, 39-year-old Yuji Hu, of Calgary, Alberta, was killed while trying to save his daughter.
In northern California, in Sutter county, north of Sacramento, a 71-year-old man died after his vehicle was swept off a flooded bridge.
Much further south, a wooden boat believed to have been ferrying migrants toward the US from Mexico capsized in stormy seas off the coast of San Diego, leaving at least four people dead and four hospitalized.
The long plume of tropical moisture that formed over the Pacific Ocean began drenching the San Francisco Bay Area last Wednesday night and then unleashed widespread rain over southern California on Friday and Saturday.