Heavy rain and snow are lashing the northeastern United States today, causing power outages and the cancellation of hundreds of flights, as the West Coast is also battered by two storms and an unusually wet winter.

“A double storm! One on each coast,” the National Weather Service (NWS) warned, citing possible “major flooding in California” and “the danger, if not the impossibility, of travel in the Northeast due to snow and coastal sleet.” floods”.

In the Northeast, “the most significant impacts are expected through Tuesday night into Wednesday” with “heavy snowfall” and “strong winds,” the NWS warned.

“If there’s no need to drive, do us a favor and stay off the roads. There are power lines everywhere, trees everywhere and it’s going to be difficult,” warned local police in Berkshire County, Massachusetts, where up to 71 centimeters of snow fell.

This dual phenomenon on both coasts, rather rare in the United States, comes after several extreme weather events, including a series of storms in January in California that killed 20 people and very heavy snowfall in late December in and around Buffalo. area of ​​upstate New York, which killed at least 39 people.

Although it is difficult to establish a direct link with climate change, scientists regularly explain that warming increases the frequency and intensity of extreme weather events.

Schools closed, elections cancelled

Severe weather and high winds are causing power outages in the Northeast, affecting more than 240,000 households, according to the specialist website poweroutage.us.

Several hundred flights have been delayed or canceled, disruptions mostly involving New York’s LaGuardia Airport or Boston’s, according to the website FlightAware. In the city of Syracuse, near the border with Canada, passengers had to evacuate a plane that had gone off the runway. The airport clarified that there were no injuries.

Schools were closed in the states of Massachusetts and New Hampshire, where dozens of local elections scheduled for Tuesday were postponed.

In California, torrential rains could cause “major flooding across much of the California coast and Central Valley, as well as the southern foothills of the Sierra Nevada,” the NWS warned.

Meteorologists warned of a high risk of avalanches. “Heavy snowfall, sleet, and strong winds will overload the snowpack,” the NWS adds.

The coastal state has already faced similar problems in recent weeks.

This weekend, homes were flooded and cars submerged after the overflowing Pajaro River breached a levee overnight Friday into Saturday, forcing thousands to flee their homes south of San Francisco.

Evacuation orders were also issued in Santa Barbara County, in the south of the state, including parts of the upscale coastal community of Montecito, where Prince Harry and his wife Meghan live.

California, the nation’s most populous state with 39 million residents, is suffering from a particularly rainy winter.

This storm is being fueled, like most others this season, by an “atmospheric river,” a giant rain corridor that carries water vapor stored in the tropics, often around Hawaii.