Mudslide, flooding force evacuations in rain-soaked Marin County

SAUSALITO — Authorities warn that mudslides are still possible Friday even after a damaging storm moved through California, trapping people in floodwaters, triggering a debris flow that destroyed homes, and forcing residents to flee communities scorched by wildfires last year.

The powerful system swept in from the Pacific Ocean and unleashed rain, snow and wind across the U.S. West into Wyoming, Colorado and Arizona after walloping Northern California and southern Oregon earlier.

The heavy rain mostly ended Thursday night but forecasters said scattered showers are expected in California through Saturday.

North of San Francisco, a mudslide barreled over cars, uprooted trees and sent a home sliding down a hill and smashing into another house in Sausalito.

A woman was rescued from the splintered wreckage with only cuts and bruises. Susan Gordon was buried under a tree and mud for two hours while crews dug her out, her son wrote on an online fundraising page.

Chris Parkman said it has been years since a storm so powerful has hit the hillside community, where at least 50 properties were evacuated.

"We don't see the rain most of the year. So most of the year you feel safe. But when the big storms come, your safety factor is gone," he said.

North of San Francisco, a levee near the city Novato breached, prompting officials to close a state highway, complicating the Friday morning commute for thousands of motorists.

Downtown San Francisco saw more than 1.75 inches (4.4 centimeters) of rain over 24 hours.

A flooded creek led authorities to urge about 300 residents to leave a community about 20 miles west of Paradise, a town destroyed last year by the nation's deadliest wildfire in a century.

It's all fueled by an atmospheric river — a plume of moisture stretching across the Pacific Ocean nearly to Hawaii.

Atmospheric rivers are long bands of water vapor that form over an ocean and flow through the sky. Formed by winds associated with storms, they occur globally but are especially significant on the West Coast.

The storm delayed flights destined for San Francisco International Airport, closed sections of several key highways, including Highway 1 on the Central Coast, Interstate 5 north of Sacramento, and U.S. 395 in the snowy eastern Sierra Nevada.

Wintry weather closed Interstate 80 in California near the Nevada border and across much of Wyoming and sections of at least four other highways. Multiple avalanches disrupted highway traffic in northwestern Montana near the Idaho border.

In Colorado, high winds shattered windows and downed power poles, leaving thousands in Colorado Springs without power.

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Associated Press writers Olga Rodriguez in San Francisco and Christopher Weber and Amanda Lee Myers in Los Angeles contributed to this report.