California coastal homes battered and bruised after weekend of intense waves and flooding | California

Coastal communities across Southern California are picking up the pieces after a weekend of extreme weather that brought flooding to the city streets and intense waves to pounding beachfront homes.

The remnants of Tropical Storm Rachel hit Baja California in Mexico this weekend, as well as Southern California and Las Vegas. Although meteorologists noted that Rachel had weakened into a post-tropical cyclone as it approached California, it still left a trail of destruction.

Footage showed massive waves crashing into homes in Long Beach, destroying a boardwalk and forcing residents to flee. The damage to houses was extensive, leaving some at risk of collapse.

At least nine of them have been deemed unsafe, the Long Beach Post reported, meaning displaced residents cannot return for their personal items. The storm cost the city more than $1 million from its emergency reserves, according to the news outlet.

Further south, the city of Newport Beach declared a local state of emergency and briefly closed the docks to “protect public safety,” citing “higher than normal waves” that flooded streets.

As of Monday, cleanup work was underway and Newport Beach had reopened the piers, but officials advised residents to use caution near the water.

In Las Vegas, a raging torrent of water poured down a street near the Strip, and the city broke an all-time daily precipitation record for the month of October with 1.08 inches (2.74 cm) of rain through Sunday morning, according to the U.S. National Weather Service.

These extreme weather conditions come as El Niño overloads the Pacific, bringing significant and long-lasting storms. The last five hurricanes in the Pacific all reached major hurricane status and were accompanied by winds of at least 111 mph (178.6 km/h), and one of them set a record for time spent in Category 5.

Phil Klotzbach, a researcher at Colorado State University who forecasts and studies storm activity, told The Associated Press that the past month has been “crazy.”

“This year, whatever forms lasts a long time and becomes really powerful,” he said.

California is bracing for a tough winter with severe storms due to an unusually strong El Niño. Models from the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) show there is a good chance this is a historic El Niño, bringing wet, wet weather, landslides and destructive high tides.

The state is one of the places expected to be significantly affected by the climate pattern, although the effects are expected to be visible around the world, with temperature spikes and rising global food prices.

Associated Press contributed to this report