Laurie Morse shoveled wet sand into bags in the pouring rain Wednesday, preparing to stack them along her garage in a last ditch effort to keep out a rising creek on California’s central coast, as the storm-ravaged state braced for another round of lashing rains and damaging winds. Morse's roof was leaking, and along with her neighbors near Santa Cruz, she’s spent every day of 2023 trying to figure out how to keep her house dry after an unrelenting onslaught of violent weather caused widespread damage over the past two weeks. Cars were submerged, trees uprooted and roofs blown off homes.  While the rain eased in many areas, thunderstorms led yet another atmospheric river into the northern half of the state and forecasters said the latest system would be followed by more storms this weekend and next week. From the San Francisco Bay Area down to Los Angeles, Californians had little time to rest between assessing damage from the last storm and preparing for the next. Earlier this week, Morse and her fellow residents of tiny Rio Del Mar were ordered to evacuate as hillsides collapsed and massive logs and stumps tumbled down the bloated Aptos Creek from the Santa Cruz mountains into the Monterey Bay. Now they were scrambling to clean up while simultaneously stacking sandbags and hoping for the best as the rain got heavier. “It’s one step forward and two steps back right now,” said Morse, 59, a disabled Army veteran. “There’s so much damage already." The plume of moisture lurking off the northern coast stretched all the way over the Pacific to Hawaii, making the atmospheric river “a true Pineapple Express,” the National Weather Service said. Read more: US braces for dangerous blast of cold, wind and snow Michael Anderson, climatologist with the Department of Water Resources, said California has been hit by seven storms since the end of December and two more slightly weaker ones were expected before the state gets a reprieve by the end of next week. “The challenge is they’re storms eight and nine in the sequence and the cumulative effect is likely to cause impacts larger than the storms themselves might cause,” Anderson said. At least 18 people have died in the storms battering the state. The figure is likely to rise, Gov. Gavin Newsom said Tuesday during a visit to the scenic town of Capitola, just up the Santa Cruz coast from Rio Del Mar, that was hard hit by flooding creek waters. Raging surf destroyed an iconic pier. A 43-year-old woman was found dead Wednesday in her submerged car a day after calling 911 to say the vehicle was stuck in floodwaters north of San Francisco, according to the Sonoma County Sheriff's Office. When the search resumed at sunrise, divers discovered the car under about 10 feet (3 meters) of water off a rural road near Forestville, the department said. More than half of California’s 58 counties were declared disaster areas and repairing the damage may cost more than $1 billion, according to Brian Ferguson, spokesperson for the state Office of Emergency Services. Crews worked to reopen major highways that were closed by rockslides, swamped by flooding or smothered with mud while more than 10,000 people who were ordered out of seaside towns on the central coast were allowed to return home. That included Montecito, a wealthy Santa Barbara County community that is home to Prince Harry and other celebrities where 23 people died and more than 100 homes were destroyed in a mudslide five years ago. This week’s storm brought back harrowing memories for Montecito resident Susanne Tobey, who was rescued when the 2018 mudslide roared through her community. Like five years ago, when the community was asked to evacuate on Monday, the only highway out was closed, she said. “It was terrifying,” she said of the latest storm. “I don’t think I slept the whole night and the rain was ... you just can’t imagine. It’s like just living in a waterfall.” But even with yet another storm on its way, Tobey said she plans to stay put again. She said the community has made improvements that she hopes will prevent a similar tragedy, including adding steel nets to catch falling boulders, and debris basins to catch the deluge before it overtakes the hillsides that plunge into the Pacific Ocean. “You have to be brave to live in California,” she said, adding: “I can’t imagine living anywhere else.” High in the Eastern Sierra, California Department of Transportation snowplows were running around the clock to fully reopen U.S. 395, which at one time was blocked by 75 miles (121 kilometers) of snow, ice and rocks. The Palisades Tahoe ski resort reported that it had received 300 inches (7.6 meters) of snowfall so far this season. Despite the precipitation, most of the state remained in extreme or severe drought, according to the U.S. Drought Monitor. Read more: Wall Street braces for earnings to get hit by inflation Mudslides damaged some homes in pricey Los Angeles hillside areas, while further up the coast a sinkhole damaged 15 homes in the rural community of Orcutt. Kevin Costner, best-actor winner in a television drama series for “Yellowstone,” was unable to attend Tuesday’s Golden Globe awards in LA because of the weather. Presenter Regina Hall said he was sheltering in place in Santa Barbara due to flooding. In San Francisco, a tree fell on a commuter bus on Tuesday without causing injuries and lightning struck the city’s iconic Transamerica Pyramid building without damage. In South San Francisco, high winds also ripped away part of the roof on a large apartment building. Crews wielding chainsaws were working around the clock to clear all the downed trees across the Bay Area. Arborist Remy Hummer said he expected many more trees to fall as rains returned. “The soil is basically like a sponge, and at some point he can’t hold any more water and trees become essentially almost buoyant in the soil and very loose. And then you get the combinations of high winds and that’s when you get tree failures, meaning full trees uprooting and falling over," he said

Californians rejoiced this week when big drops of water started falling from the sky for the first time in any measurable way since the spring, an annual soaking that heralds the start of the rainy season following some of the hottest and driest months on record. But as the rain was beginning to fall on Tuesday night, Gov. Gavin Newsom did a curious thing: He issued a statewide drought emergency and gave regulators permission to enact mandatory statewide water restrictions if they choose. Newsom's order might seem jarring, especially as forecasters predict up to 7 inches (18 centimeters) of rain could fall on parts of the Northern California mountains and Central Valley this week. But experts say it makes sense if you think of drought as something caused not by the weather, but by climate change. Read: Wildfires rage as US West grapples with heat wave, drought For decades, California has relied on rain and snow in the winter to fill the state's major rivers and streams in the spring, which then feed a massive system of lakes that store water for drinking, farming and energy production. But that annual runoff from the mountains is getting smaller, mostly because it's getting hotter and drier, not just because it's raining less. In the spring, California's snowpack in the Sierra Nevada mountains was 60% of its historical average. But the amount of water that made it to the reservoirs was similar to 2015, when the snowpack was just 5% of its historical average. Nearly all of the water state officials had expected to get this year either evaporated into the hotter air or was absorbed into the drier soil. “You don’t get into the type of drought that we're seeing in the American West right now just from ... missing a few storms,” said Justin Mankin, a geography professor at Dartmouth College and co-lead of the Drought Task Force at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. “A warm atmosphere evaporates more water from the land surface (and) reduces (the) amount of water available for other uses, like people and hydropower and growing crops.” California's “water year” runs from Oct. 1 to Sept. 30. The 2021 water year, which just ended, was the second driest on record. The one before that was the fifth driest on record. Some of the state's most important reservoirs are at record low levels. Things are so bad in Lake Mendocino that state officials say it could be dry by next summer. Even if California were to have above-average rain and snow this winter, warming temperatures mean it still likely won't be enough to make up for all the water California lost. This past year, California had its warmest ever statewide monthly average temperatures in June, July and October 2020. Jeanine Jones, interstate resources manager for the California Department of Water Resources, said people should not think about drought “as being just this occasional thing that happens sometimes, and then we go back to a wetter system.” “We are really transitioning to a drier system so, you know, dry becomes the new normal," she said. “Drought is not a short-term feature. Droughts take time to develop, and they usually linger for quite some time." Water regulators have already ordered some farmers and other big users to stop taking water out of the state's major rivers and streams. Mandatory water restrictions for regular people could be next. Read: Why the world should pay attention to Taiwan's drought In July, Newsom asked people to voluntarily reduce their water use by 15%. In July and August, people cut back 3.5%. On Tuesday, Newsom issued an executive order giving state regulators permission to impose mandatory restrictions, including banning people from washing their cars, using water to clean sidewalks and driveways and filling decorative fountains. State officials have warned water agencies that they might not get any water from the state's reservoirs this year, at least initially. That will be very challenging, said Dave Eggerton, executive director of the Association of California Water Agencies. But he said he believes Californians will start to conserve more water soon with the help of a statewide conservation campaign, which will include messages on electronic signboards along busy highways. “It's going to happen,” he said. “People are starting to get the message, and they want to do their part.”