A POWERFUL Pacific storm left two people dead in California as winds of more than 70mph trashed power lines and brought down trees as cars disappeared into a sinkhole.
Homes were evacuated under threat of mudslides and debris flows.
More than 300 arriving and departing flights were delayed or cancelled at Los Angeles International Airport.
In the Sherman Oaks area of Los Angeles a falling tree downed power lines and hit a car. A 55-year-old man was electrocuted and pronounced dead at hospital, police and fire officials said.
Later in the same neighbourhood, a sinkhole swallowed two cars, the second on live TV as viewers watched it teeter on the edge before plunging in.
Firefighters rescued one person from the first car, and the driver got out of the second before it fell. No-one was injured.
Winds gusting to 70mph or more lashed parts of the region, and heavy rains turned creeks and rivers into brown torrents and released large volumes of mud from hillsides burned barren by wildfires.
Several stretches of highways were closed by flooding.
In the desert town of Victorville, several cars were washed down a flooded street.
A helicopter rescued one person from the roof of a car but another motorist was found dead in a submerged vehicle, San Bernardino County fire spokesman Eric Sherwin said.
Elsewhere in the county, a 20-mile stretch of State Route 138 in the West Cajon Valley was closed at the scene of a summer wildfire.
Mud sloshed over concrete rail barriers and about two dozen vehicles, including lorries and a school bus, were either mired in mud or became unable to turn around on the closed road and some were abandoned.
Two people in a car were rescued and four students on the bus were removed and taken to a school office, Sherwin said.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules here