Along the Central Coast, California’s scenic Highway 1 was closed 20 miles south of Big Sur after a stretch of road collapsed when the cliff below gave way in torrential rain.
Photos of the highway show a large chunk of the road missing, with the northern and southern lanes destroyed.
Caltrans spokesman Jim Shivers said the damage to the highway is called a slip. “This is where we lost part of the highway and now we are faced with a project to clean and fix that stretch,” said Shivers. “This is the only place we know where this happened during the storm. Our maintenance team is now patrolling the highway for further damage.”
Shivers said it is not known when the road will reopen, but engineers are assessing the situation and should have more information today.
Highway 1 between MPM 40 and the San Luis Obispo County line is closed due to bad weather, debris flow, floods and landslides, the California Highway Patrol said.
CHP MontereyThe closure was at Rat Creek, between MPM 40 and the San Luis Obispo County border, the California Highway Patrol said.
The coast of Big Sur is subject to landslides and, in 2017, a slide closed a stretch of the road for more than a year.
“Anyone familiar with the history of Highway 1 knows that as soon as we enter the rainy season, slides of varying degrees, slides, rockslides are what we face and we know it will happen,” said Shivers.
An atmospheric river caused a flood in California this week, with the Central Coast receiving most of the rain. In Salinas, Monterey County, mud flows damaged about two dozen homes on Wednesday. The hillside above the area around River Road was susceptible to landslides after the fire last summer that ignited the landscape and made it more subject to erosion.
A peak in the Santa Lucia Mountains received 40 centimeters of rain from Tuesday to Friday. The city of Monterey registered 3.46. Before the storm, Monterey had seen just 2.14 inches since October 1.
The stormy weather is decreasing on Friday. The central coast area, the San Francisco Bay area and other northern regions are expected to remain dry, though cloudy, over the weekend.
Atmospheric rivers are long, narrow streams of water vapor that form over the ocean and flow across the sky. They occur globally, but are especially significant on the United States’ West Coast, where they create 30% to 50% of annual rainfall and are linked to water supplies and problems like floods and landslides, according to the Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. National.
The atmospheric river is part of a major change in California’s climate, which has had significant drought conditions for months. Drought contributed to forest fires that burned more than 4.2 million acres in 2020, the highest recorded in modern history.
The Associated Press contributed to this story.
Highway 1 between MPM 40 and the San Luis Obispo County line is closed due to bad weather, debris flow, floods and landslides, the California Highway Patrol said.
CHP Monterey