More than 85,000 customers in California remained without power on Wednesday following an intense batch of storms. The Golden State has now been hit by their 12th atmospheric river since they first began pummeling the region in late December.
Earlier, California was ravaged on Tuesday by another major storm, which triggered floods, mudslides, tornadoes, uprooted trees and left thousands of residents under evacuation orders.
The storm, which then spiraled into a bomb cyclone, caused deadly wind speeds in Santa Cruz county with gusts growing to 80 miles per hour (122 kilometers per hour). Wind speeds in the Bay Area grew to 88 mph and left five people dead.
All five individuals were killed by tree-impact related incidents, including two people in San Francisco who suffered severe injuries from tree-impacts and later died from those injuries in a hospital.
A third man in Oakland was killed when a tree fell on his tent, officials said, and a man driving a sewer truck was killed when a tree fell on his vehicle. In Rossmoor, a driver was injured and the passenger was killed when a large tree fell on their car.
The intense wind speeds also caused a couch to sail through the air, narrowly missing a pedestrian who was walking outside. The extraordinary video was captured and shared to social media by eyewitness Brandon Au.
Muir Woods National Monument, which is just north of San Francisco, was forced to close on Wednesday as employees worked to clean the debris caused by the storm.
Videos of tornadoes touching down in Montebello, near Los Angeles, were also shared to social media. The tornado damaged buildings but no reports of injuries have surfaced yet.
The weather system is now expected to move southeast, and will bring with it severe weather to Texas, Alabama and Oklahoma, including hail and damaging winds. As the storm reaches parts of Louisiana, Mississippi and Arkansas by Friday, it may cause a possible tornado outbreak, the National Weather Service has warned.