Sharjah24 - Reuters: Emergency officials in several California counties spent Friday patrolling levies and swollen rivers as an "atmospheric river" storm drenched the already-sodden state with torrential rains, causing floods that washed out roads and prompted evacuations.
The latest deluge from dense streams of Pacific moisture sweeping California's skies soaked some mountain areas still clogged with piles of snow dumped by a recent spate of paralyzing blizzards, while bringing even more snow to higher elevations.
The San Bernardino County Sheriff's Department said it was investigating what role, if any, late-February snowstorms may have played in the demise of at least eight people, most of them elderly, found to have died alone while snowbound in their homes over the past two weeks.
Residents in the town of Big Bear and nearby mountain enclaves have said their communities were ill-prepared for the severity of winter storms that local authorities called unprecedented for Southern California's high country.
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