California residents asked to leave homes as rains flood US state

Thousands of California residents have been told to leave their homes as heavy rains caused flooding in various parts of the state, The New York Times reported.

The continuous storms in California have killed 17 people since late December.

Relentless storms over the last 11 days have left no part of the state untouched, flooding towns from north to south and loading inland mountains with snow.

Meteorologists say that the rainfall will spread north into the Pacific Northwest by Wednesday evening and will continue through Friday.

In the Bay Area, the storm knocked over Sausalito's sea lion sculpture on the southern waterfront, according to city officials, The New York Times reported.

The sculpture will return to its platform in Spring.

The rains led to the closure of multiple roads in Palm Springs, located in a desert. At least one person was rescued. The region gets less than five inches of precipitation annually.

Recently, it was reported that a warming climate will increase the number of tropical cyclones and their intensity in the North Atlantic, potentially creating more and stronger hurricanes, according to simulations using a high-resolution, global climate model.

"Unfortunately, it's not great news for people living in coastal regions," said Christina Patricola, an Iowa State University assistant professor of geological and atmospheric sciences, an affiliate of the U.S. Department of Energy's Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in California and a study leader. "Atlantic hurricane seasons will become even more active in the future, and hurricanes will be even more intense."

The research team ran climate simulations using the Department of Energy's Energy Exascale Earth System Model and found that tropical cyclone frequency could increase 66 per cent during active North Atlantic hurricane seasons by the end of this century. (Those seasons are typically characterized by La Nina conditions -- unusually cool surface water in the eastern tropical Pacific Ocean -- and the positive phase of the Atlantic Meridional Mode -- warmer surface temperatures in the northern tropical Atlantic Ocean).

The projected number of tropical cyclones could increase by 34 per cent during inactive North Atlantic hurricane seasons. Inactive seasons generally occur during El Nino conditions with warmer surface temperatures in the eastern tropical Pacific Ocean and the negative phase of the Atlantic Meridional Mode with cooler surface temperatures in the northern tropical Atlantic Ocean.