As California’s rains ease, many are seeing the damage escalate

More than 37,000 homes and businesses in the state were without power as of Saturday afternoon, including more than 28,000 in Monterey County PowerOutage.us.

Gov. Gavin Newsom has explained 34 of California’s 58 counties are in a state of emergency. Eight to nine inches of rain has fallen in the higher elevations of the Sierra Nevada Mountains since the storm system moved in Thursday afternoon, the National Weather Service said.

In parts of the state that escaped the brunt of the storm, some residents were still trying to return to their normal lives.

In San Bernardino County, east of Los Angeles, where many mountain residents were trapped in their homes by snowdrifts up to 12 feet high for more than a week, some people went about their business on Saturday, when officials reported that all of the county – Manicured roads – a total of 516 miles – were maintained and crews worked to create second lanes.

A public information officer with the San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Department said no new deaths had been reported and no coroner’s findings had been released. The San Bernardino Sheriff’s Office said Thursday there were 13 deaths during the storm, but so far it has determined only one was directly linked.

About 3,000 students at the Rim of the World Unified School District, which serves 17 communities in the San Bernardino Mountains, have been out of class for two weeks because of the weather, but the district chief said Saturday she was confident it would be through Thursday or Friday can return.

Before that, however, more precipitation waves are on their way. Another atmospheric flow — a storm named for its long, narrow shape and immense volume of water — is forecast for Monday afternoon and is expected to last about 24 hours, leaving insufficient time for the ground and river system to swell all the water, before soaking it again. The storm will bring more heavy rain, with heavy snowfall in the Sierra Nevada. Meteorologists say this will be California’s 11th atmospheric flow this winter.