Heavy rain and landslides in California left part of a backyard swimming pool hanging off the edge of a cliff
Mario Tama/Getty Images
- Part of a backyard pool was left hanging off a cliff after heavy rains in California caused mudslides.
- Land from under the pool's edge appeared to have been washed away.
- Homes in San Clemente, Orange County, were evacuated during the storm this week.
A backyard swimming pool was left partially hanging off the edge of a cliff after an onslaught of rain in California caused mudslides this week.
Homes in the beachfront community of San Clemente were evacuated during the storm this week, Reuters reported. The mudslides even caused a large chunk of one San Clemente home's backyard to crumble away — leaving the edge of the home's swimming pool exposed and hanging off the cliffside, per Reuters.
Mario Tama/Getty Images
A tweet from Michele Gile, a CBS LA journalist reporting from Orange County, showed the destruction wrought on that home in San Clemente.
Gile's tweet showed the backyard swimming pool — with floats and surfboards still in it — resting precariously on the cliff's edge.
Land from under the pool's edge appeared to have been washed away.
—michele gile (@michelegiletv) March 15, 2023
"This season we've had a tremendous amount of rain, and I don't think we're done with it yet. It's saturated the landscape," Thanh Nguyen, a fire captain from Orange County, told the BBC.
He added: "The concern that we have right now is that there's still more earth that is slopping off as we speak."
This comes as California experiences its eleventh atmospheric river this storm season. An atmospheric river — also known as a river in the sky — is a stream of moisture passing overhead, per The Guardian. Atmospheric rivers in California are formed from warm water vapor rising from the Pacific Ocean, and can carry 15 times the volume of the Mississippi River.
The heavy rain that came from these atmospheric rivers has forced evacuations and caused power outages and road closures, per Reuters. Across California, 169,000 people were left without electricity as of Wednesday afternoon, reported CNN, citing numbers from PowerOutage.us.
Representatives for the Orange County fire department did not immediately respond to Insider's request for comment, sent outside of regular business hours.