California 'weather bomb' storm kills 2, wreaks havoc


A powerful southern California rainstorm that began Friday has killed at least two people and produced car-sized sinkholes, power outages, flash floods, and mudslides. The storm is what's known as a bombogenesis, or "weather bomb," a rapid weather system that typically develops in coastal areas.
One person was killed in Los Angeles when power lines fell on their car; the other victim died when their car was submerged by a flash flood. Rescue efforts are underway in affected areas, but another 10 trillion gallons of rain are expected to fall on California in the coming week, raising new concerns about the safety of the Oroville Dam.
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Bonnie Kristian was a deputy editor and acting editor-in-chief of TheWeek.com. She is a columnist at Christianity Today and author of Untrustworthy: The Knowledge Crisis Breaking Our Brains, Polluting Our Politics, and Corrupting Christian Community (forthcoming 2022) and A Flexible Faith: Rethinking What It Means to Follow Jesus Today (2018). Her writing has also appeared at Time Magazine, CNN, USA Today, Newsweek, the Los Angeles Times, and The American Conservative, among other outlets.
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