Sharjah24 - AFP: After being destroyed by a wildfire, Jason and Shannon Phleger's home was just repaired until it was once again destroyed by a violent storm that recently blew across California.
Even for a state almost perpetually suffering from drought, the parade of biblical disasters is too much to bear.
"When I heard the news, my heart just dropped; it was heartbreaking," said Shannon Phleger of the moment she learned heavy winds had brought a redwood tree crashing down onto her house.
Near-record rains have pulverized much of California over the last few weeks, as nine storm systems crashed in from the Pacific Ocean in rapid succession.
Floods, landslides and rockfalls killed at least 20 people, cut off communities and left hundreds of thousands of homes without power.
Boulder Creek, a small mountain community north of Santa Cruz, escaped the worst of the floods but powerful winds proved too much for trees weakened by wildfires there in 2020.
Just days before the Phlegers and their two sons were due to move back into their rebuilt home, the still-blackened trunk of one of those trees crashed through the roof.
"I believe that was a direct result of climate change," Shannon Phleger, 43, said as she surveyed the devastation.
Humanity's unchecked burning of fossil fuels over the last two centuries is making the planet warmer and altering weather patterns.
That means wilder and wetter storms, as well as longer, hotter heat waves that create the conditions for supercharged wildfires.
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