:format(jpg):focal(1045x582:1055x572):watermark(cloudfront-eu-central-1.images.arcpublishing.com/ipmgroup/5IDEBLR7ERC5TMAPLOHS63MVNM.png,0,30,0)/cloudfront-eu-central-1.images.arcpublishing.com/ipmgroup/N3S4RRUG4ZFCHHVILU4W6FUDQE.jpg "Bad weather hits northwestern United States: record snowfall in California")
On Monday, 492 cm of snow had already fallen on the central Sierra Nevada, against 455 cm during the month of December 1970, the previous record in the state, told AFP a specialized laboratory at the University of Berkeley.
“We really weren’t expecting such a wet winter,” said Dr Andrew Schwartz, who heads this lab. “We finally have a lot more snow than expected this year, which is of course a very good surprise,” he said.
According to Dr Schwartz, an additional 20 to 30 cm of snow is expected in the next 24 hours.
The western United States is in the grip of a chronic drought and has been confronted in recent years with gigantic and sometimes deadly forest fires, particularly in northern California.
The recent snowfall on the summits, which constitutes a water reserve for the hot months, is therefore welcome. But it is still too early to say if these bad weather will actually improve the situation, said Andrew Schwartz.
The neighboring states of Oregon and Washington were not spared by the bad weather, which caused power cuts and disrupted transportation.
While the west coast of the United States was experiencing temperatures well below seasonal norms, unusual heat prevailed over Texas in the south of the country. On Saturday, the temperature reached 34 ° C in Rio Grande Village, near the Mexican border, a national heat record for a Christmas day.
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