The crash was reported around 1 a.m. Saturday on Highway 101 south of Brokaw Road.

In a statement, the CHP said a 2020 Toyota Camry was traveling northbound when it veered to the right, hit a 2023 Tesla Model Y and “continued out of control in a northeasterly direction.”

The Toyota then collided with a wooden traffic sign pole and a metal light pole before crossing the North First Street onramp and traveling down an embankment, the CHP said, adding that the car rolled over before coming to a rest on its wheels.

San Jose firefighters pronounced the male driver of the Toyota dead at the scene just before 1:30 a.m., the CHP said. The Santa Clara County Medical Examiner-Coroner’s Office will release the driver’s identity once it is confirmed and his next of kin is notified.

The other driver, a 45-year-old San Carlos man, was not injured, according to the statement.

The collision remains under investigation, but the CHP said it does not suspect alcohol played a role.

Anyone with information about the crash can contact the CHP San Jose area office at 408-961-0900.

Check back for updates.

New rainfall totals show that no person alive has experienced a three-week period in the Bay Area as wet as these past 21 days. The last time it happened, Abraham Lincoln was president.

From Dec. 26 to Jan. 15, 17 inches of rain fell in downtown San Francisco. That’s the second-wettest three-week period at any time in San Francisco’s recorded history since daily records began in 1849 during the Gold Rush. And it’s more than five times the city’s historical average of 3.1 inches over the same time.

The only three-week period that was wetter in San Francisco — often used as the benchmark for Bay Area weather because it has the oldest records — came during the Civil War when a drowning 23.01 inches fell from Jan. 5 to Jan. 25, 1862, during a landmark winter that became known as “The Great Flood of 1862.”

“The rainfall numbers over the past three weeks just kept adding up. They became a blur,” said Jan Null, a meteorologist with Golden Gate Weather Services in Half Moon Bay, who compiled the totals. “We had a strong jet stream that was bringing in storms, one after another. It was hard along the way to separate the individual storms.”

So much rain fell since Christmas in Northern California that some cities, including Oakland, Stockton, Modesto and Livermore, already have reached their yearly average rainfall totals. In other words, if it didn’t rain another drop until October, they would still have a normal precipitation year.

The parade of soaking storms, which have caused flooding in the Central Valley, Salinas Valley and Santa Cruz Mountains, along with power outages, mudslides and at least 20 deaths statewide, left the Sierra Nevada with a statewide snowpack 251% of normal on Tuesday.

Light rain is expected Wednesday night, but otherwise forecasts call for dry conditions for much of the rest of January. River levels now are dropping.

“We’ve gotten so much water and so much snow,” said Daniel Swain, a climate scientist at UCLA. “It’s going to help us dry out and dig out heading into late January. It’s really good news because it takes off the trajectory toward worsening flooding.”

For a sense of how much worse it has been, consider the winter of 1861-62.

Between November 1861 and January 1862, it rained so much that the Central Valley became a vast inland sea, 30 feet deep, for 300 miles. Leland Stanford, who had been elected governor, took a rowboat through the streets of Sacramento to reach his inauguration.

Warm storms on a massive snowpack that winter caused immense flooding, wiping farms, mills, bridges and in some case whole towns off the map. An estimated 4,000 people died, roughly 1% of California’s population at the time, and more than the death toll in the 1906 San Francisco Earthquake.

Now, California has large dams and reservoirs that limit flooding in wet years. There also are thousands of miles of levees and pumps, weirs and other flood control projects that were not in place in the 1860s.

And despite the recent wet weeks, Northern California is nowhere near the final yearly rainfall total of 1861-62. San Francisco on Tuesday had 21.75 inches of rain since Oct. 1. That total would have to more than double in the coming months to reach the 49.27 inches that fell in 1861-62, or the 47.19 inches that fell in the second-wettest year in history, 1997-98.

Weather experts have become increasingly concerned that if another massive winter like 1861-62 hit — and tree rings and other historical records show they have occurred roughly every 100 to 200 years — millions of people could be trapped by floods, freeways could be shut for weeks, and the damage could reach into the hundreds of billions of dollars.

A study last summer by scientists at UCLA found that the chances of such a series of huge storms, while still remote, have roughly doubled due to climate change. Climate change has warmed ocean waters, allowing more moisture to be absorbed in atmospheric river storms.

Swain, a co-author of that study, said that climate change is already increasing the amount of moisture in such storms by about 5%, and that will climb as temperatures continue to warm.

Very wet winters are nothing new in California. Since July 1, San Francisco has had the fifth most rainfall on record. But all four of the wetter periods were in the 1800s.

“California has always had big storms like this,” said Park Williams, an associate professor of geography at UCLA, whose research has shown that droughts and wildfires are becoming more severe due to warming. “Climate change can make them more intense. But we might have had a year this wet whether or not we had climate change. And 1862 proves that.”

None of the canines or felines were injured and they were taken into temporary custody by Contra Costa Animal Services Department officers,  authorities said.

Three residents of the two-story home on Barber Lane were able to get out on their own and one was taken to a hospital for smoke inhalation, Contra Costa County Fire Protection District spokesman Steve Hill said.

The fire started in the garage of the home about 11 a.m. and spread to the second floor, Hill said.  Flames and smoke were coming out of the house when firefighters got to the scene.

Firefighters discovered the animals when they made entry into the house and brought them outside, Hill said.

Hill said the fire was brought under control about 11:30 a.m.  No firefighters were injured.

The cause of the fire is under investigation. A damage figure was not immediately available.

Animal Services Lt. Alana Weissman,  said the dogs, including some puppies,  had been left in the care of the house residents about a week ago by their owner who lives out of the county. The owner was enroute to the house Tuesday afternoon to retrieve the dogs, she said.

She said animal services officers would remain on the scene to wait for the dogs’ owner to arrive.

She said officers  were “happy to come out and assist and give the animals a quick onceover to make sure they were healthy. They all look happy and healthy.”

The Tesla Model S that braked sharply and triggered an eight-car crash in San Francisco in November had the automaker’s controversial driver-assist software engaged at the time, according to data the federal government released Tuesday.

The Tesla Model S slowed to 7 mph on the highway at the time of the crash, according to the data. Publicly released video also showed the car moving into the far-left lane and braking abruptly.

The Tesla’s driver told authorities that the vehicle’s “full self-driving” software braked unexpectedly and triggered the pileup on Thanksgiving day. CNN Business was first to report last month the driver’s claim that “full self-driving” was active.

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration then announced that it was sending a special crash investigation team to examine the incident. The agency typically conducts special investigations into about 100 crashes a year.

The pileup took place hours after Tesla CEO Elon Musk announced that its “full self-driving” driver-assist system was available to anyone in North America who requested it and had paid for the option. Tesla had previously restricted access to drivers with high scores on its safety rating system.

“Full self-driving” is designed to keep up with traffic, steer in the lane and abide by traffic signals, but despite Tesla’s name for it, it requires an attentive human driver prepared to take full control of the car at any moment. It’s delighted some Tesla drivers but also alarmed others with its flaws. Drivers are warned on an in-car screen by Tesla when they install “full self-driving” that it “may do the wrong thing at the worst time.”

Tesla generally does not engage with the professional news media and did not respond to CNN’s request for comment.

“We are proud of Autopilot’s performance and its impact on reducing traffic collisions. The benefit and promise of Autopilot is clear from the Vehicle Safety Report data that we have been sharing for 4 years,” Tesla said this month in an update to its vehicle safety data.

Traffic safety experts have long questioned the merits of Tesla’s findings, which show fewer crashes when the driver-assist technologies are active, because among other things they’re generally used on highways where crashes are already rarer.

Tesla’s driver-assist technologies, Autopilot and “full self-driving” are already being investigated by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration following reports of unexpected braking that occurs “without warning, at random, and often repeatedly in a single drive,” the agency has said in a statement.

The agency has received hundreds of complaints from Tesla users. Some have described near crashes and concerns for their safety.

Bryan Reimer, an autonomous vehicle researcher with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s AgeLab, told CNN Business the revelation that driver-assist technology was engaged raises questions about when NHTSA will act on its investigation, and what the future holds for Tesla’s driver-assist features.

“How many more crashes will there be before NHTSA releases findings?” Reimer said.

Reimer said it remains to be seen if there’s a recall of any Tesla driver-assist features, and what it means for the automaker’s future. Musk has said before the company would be “worth basically zero” if it doesn’t provide “full self-driving.”

The two-car crash was reported around 7 a.m. Saturday on eastbound State Route 156 west of Monterey Street.

In a statement, the CHP said the woman was driving a 2019 Honda Civic in the left lane when she lost control, veered across the right lane and hit a guardrail. The car then careened back into the left lane, where it was struck by a 2011 Honda Civic.

Both cars came to a rest in eastbound lanes of the highway, the CHP said, adding that a Good Samaritan stopped to help the drivers and called 911. Emergency medical personnel provided aid to the driver of the 2019 Honda Civic, but she died of her injuries.

The San Benito County Coroner’s Office will release the woman’s identity once it is confirmed and her next of kin is notified.

The other driver, a 53-year-old Hollister woman, was not injured, according to the statement.

The CHP said the initial collision was caused by “unsafe speed and wet roadway conditions.” As of Monday, it was not known if alcohol or drugs played a role in the crash.

Anyone who witnessed the collision can contact the CHP Hollister-Gilroy area office at 408-427-0700.

Check back for updates.

So how do people still get caught in the crosshairs of megastorms that have proven their ability to flood cars, ravage homes and claim lives? Have Californians—once roundly ridiculed as weather wimps—already become jaded to atmospheric rivers and overconfident that they can handle the hazards?

Meteorologists only really started digging into complicated questions about weather psychology like these around 20 years ago, according to Rebecca Morss, a senior scientist at the National Center for Atmospheric Research.

There’s a long list of reasons why people either can’t stay home in this extreme weather, or simply choose not to, so researchers are focusing on the best ways to help people recognize the risks. They want to avoid normalizing extreme events, or making people so afraid of weather reports that they shut down and reject the information entirely.

“Different people are going respond to different information in totally different ways—some people really trust authorities and science, some people don’t,” Morss said, explaining how political and cultural views complicate weather warnings. “There’s no one-size-fits-all solution. I think if this were an easy problem, we probably would have solved it by now.”

While scientific knowledge and forecast technology has improved by leaps and bounds over the last 30 years, Morss said crafting messaging that encourages emergency preparation without overstating the risks—a sure way to lose the public’s trust—is still a challenge, especially as extreme weather events become more frequent across the country due to climate change.

This messaging—and the collective response to it—has shifted significantly over the last few decades.

A lack of official warnings was partially to blame for hundreds of deaths during a 1976 flash flood in Colorado’s Big Thompson Canyon. But by 2011, after one of the deadliest tornados in U.S. history ripped through Missouri, researchers concluded that many residents had become desensitized to sirens and warnings.

At a basic level, she said it’s important to avoid meteorologist jargon, steer clear of complex information and repeat messaging to help people avoid finding themselves in a tragic situation.

“A lot of people have seen extreme weather on TV or been close to it, but how many of us have really experienced a truly life-threatening situation due to weather?” Morss pointed out. “It’s really hard to know exactly where (flooding) is going to happen, and it’s also just really hard for a person to imagine the place that they know and see every day suddenly being under all this water.”

Storms are unpredictable, she said, and it can be hard for someone to reliably judge when a normally safe roadway or other location has become an unsafe one—until it’s too late.

“We’ve all done things that we look back on afterwards and say, ‘Wow, I was so lucky,’” Morss said.

Significant storm systems in California are a routine occurrence, but Warren Blier, a meteorologist and science officer with the National Weather Service in Monterey, immediately knew the current set of storms was different.

“One day in late December, I was looking at computer model output through the extended portion of the forecast, and I remember thinking, ‘I just don’t see an end to this,’” Blier said. “What was so extraordinary was that even early on, it was starting to look to me like the possibility of just system after system after system.”

It was the first time he remembers seeing that kind of forecast since the El Niño winter of 1997-98.

“Astonished, that would be too strong,” Blier said of his reaction, “but it was more of a ‘wow’ moment—a series of ‘wow’ moments.”

While these weather conditions might generate more of a shrug for people in other parts of the country—from the Rockies and the Great Plains to the East Coast—there’s more potential for extreme impacts in a more vulnerable state like California.

He said it’s all about what people have learned and prepared for over time.

“I think people from other parts of the country who don’t routinely experience significant earthquakes find it a little mind-boggling that it doesn’t discomfort people here more, and the reverse is true when it comes to the weather stuff,” Blier said. “In Minnesota, you kind of know what weather you’re going to have, and things are designed around that. But for a generally reasonable, pleasant climate in California, when you suddenly throw in all these winds and all this water, (the state) is not really designed to accommodate all that because it’s not what routinely occurs.”

One of the most important developments in recent years is more collaboration between meteorologists and local emergency management workers—sharing weather expertise and predictions, and seeking out the best ways to disseminate that information to the community.

Daily weather briefings from the National Weather Service are sent to people like Kia Xiong, Santa Clara County’s emergency risk communications officer, who helps coordinate resources when those forecasts trigger the county’s inclement weather plans.

She said those plans activate outreach teams to reach unsheltered communities, especially along the creeks and waterways, while other public information officers blast messaging over Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, NextDoor and the county’s website.

Xiong said they stick to static posts with text and a photo—avoiding videos and gifs that relay information too slowly—to share what is happening, what people need to do and a URL or phone number to access resources. These posts are translated into English, Spanish, Chinese, Vietnamese and Tagalog, and include accessibility features like alt-text.

“That’s how we made sure that we’re reaching a broad audience and that no one is missed,” Xiong said. “The pandemic certainly changed the way we push out messaging, because now we have to make sure that all of our documentation, all of our social media posts, all of our graphics are accessible to everyone.”

But at the end of the day, community members are left to assess risks for themselves.

“Sometimes people do look out the window and see that it’s not raining as hard as the weather service or public government is saying,” Xiong said. “So it really is up to community members themselves to make those decisions.

“We can only say, ‘Hey, stay off the road’ so many times.”

The storm likely will mark the final major blast of precipitation for the foreseeable future, offering the region a chance to recover from deluges that have killed at least 19 people across California since late December.

Still, meteorologists warned residents to remain vigilant a little while longer as flooding risks will remain until Monday due to extremely waterlogged soils.

“The ground is still saturated,” said Colby Goatley, a National Weather Service meteorologist. “There’s still going to be plenty of chance for runoff and localized flooding. We just want everyone to keep paying attention.

“But hopefully,” he added, “this is the light at the end of the tunnel.”

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POKHARA, Nepal — A plane making a 27-minute flight to a Nepal tourist town crashed into a gorge Sunday while attempting to land at a newly opened airport, killing at least 68 of the 72 people aboard. At least one witness reported hearing cries for help from within the fiery wreck, the country’s deadliest airplane accident in three decades.

Hours after dark, scores of onlookers crowded around the crash site near the airport in the resort town of Pokhara as rescue workers combed the wreckage on the edge of the cliff and in the ravine below. Officials suspended the search for the four missing people overnight and planned to resume looking Monday.

Local resident Bishnu Tiwari, who rushed to the crash site near the Seti River to help search for bodies, said the rescue efforts were hampered by thick smoke and a raging fire.

“The flames were so hot that we couldn’t go near the wreckage. I heard a man crying for help, but because of the flames and smoke we couldn’t help him,” Tiwari said.

It was not immediately clear what caused the accident, Nepal’s Civil Aviation Authority said.

A witness said he saw the aircraft spinning violently in the air after it began descending to land, watching from the terrace of his house. Finally, Gaurav Gurung said, the plane fell nose-first towards its left and crashed into the gorge.

The aviation authority said the aircraft last made contact with the airport from near Seti Gorge at 10:50 a.m. before crashing.

The twin-engine ATR 72 aircraft, operated by Nepal’s Yeti Airlines, was flying from the capital, Kathmandu, to Pokhara, located 200 kilometers (125 miles) west. It was carrying 68 passengers including 15 foreign nationals, as well as four crew members, Nepal’s Civil Aviation Authority said in a statement. The foreigners included five Indians, four Russians, two South Koreans, and one each from Ireland, Australia, Argentina and France.

Images and videos shared on Twitter showed plumes of smoke billowing from the crash site, about 1.6 kilometers (nearly a mile) away from Pokhara International Airport. The aircraft’s fuselage was split into multiple parts that were scattered down the gorge.

Firefighters carried bodies, some burned beyond recognition, to hospitals where grief-stricken relatives had assembled. At Kathmandu airport, family members appeared distraught as they were escorted in and at times exchanged heated words with officials as they waited for information.

Tek Bahadur K. C., a senior administrative officer in the Kaski district, said he expected rescue workers to find more bodies at the bottom of the gorge.

Prime Minister Pushpa Kamal Dahal, who rushed to Tribhuvan International Airport in Kathmandu after the crash, set up a panel to investigate the accident.

”The incident was tragic. The full force of the Nepali army, police has been deployed for rescue,” he said.

South Korea’s Foreign Ministry said in a statement that it’s still trying to confirm the fate of two South Korean passengers and has sent staff to the scene. The Russian Ambassador to Nepal, Alexei Novikov, confirmed the death of four Russian citizens who were on board the plane.

Pokhara is the gateway to the Annapurna Circuit, a popular hiking trail in the Himalayas. The city’s new international airport began operations only two weeks ago.

The type of plane involved, the ATR 72, has been used by airlines around the world for short regional flights. Introduced in the late 1980s by a French and Italian partnership, the aircraft model has been involved in several deadly accidents over the years.

In Taiwan two earlier accidents involving ATR 72-500 and ATR 72-600 aircrafts happened just months apart.

In July 2014, a TransAsia ATR 72-500 flight crashed while trying to land on the scenic Penghu archipelago between Taiwan and China, killing 48 people onboard. An ATR 72-600 operated by the same Taiwanese airline crashed shortly after takeoff in Taipei in February 2015 after one of its engines failed and the second was shut down, apparently by mistake.

The 2015 crash, captured in dramatic footage that showed the plane striking a taxi as it hurtled out of control, killed 43, and prompted authorities to ground all Taiwanese-registered ATR 72s for some time. TransAsia ceased all flights in 2016 and later went out of business.

ATR identified the plane involved in Sunday’s crash as an ATR 72-500 in a tweet. According to plane tracking data from flightradar24.com, the aircraft was 15 years old and “equipped with an old transponder with unreliable data.” It was previously flown by India’s Kingfisher Airlines and Thailand’s Nok Air before Yeti took it over in 2019, according to records on Airfleets.net.

Yeti Airlines has a fleet of six ATR72-500 planes, company spokesperson Sudarshan Bartaula said.

Nepal, home to eight of the world’s 14 highest mountains, including Mount Everest, has a history of air crashes. According to the Flight Safety Foundation’s Aviation Safety database, there have been 42 fatal plane crashes in Nepal since 1946.

Sunday’s crash is Nepal’s deadliest since 1992, when all 167 people aboard a Pakistan International Airlines plane were killed when it plowed into a hill as it tried to land in Kathmandu.

Saaliq reported from New Delhi. Elise Morton in London, Kim Tong-hyung in Seoul, South Korea, and Adam Schreck in Bangkok contributed reporting.

The four related victims lived in two homes on Sandy Ridge Road in Prattville, about 27 miles northwest of Montgomery, the Autauga County Sheriff’s Office said in a news release Saturday: Robert Gardner Jr., 70, and Deanna Marie Corbin, 59, lived in one home while Christopher Allen Cobrin Jr., 46, and Tessa Celeste Desmet, 21, lived in the other, the release said. It did not specify how the victims were related.

The three others killed in Autauga County were Carmen Cox Autery, 59, who also lived on Sandy Ridge Road; Andrea Sue Taylor, 61; and Solomon Antiono Smith, 50, the release said.

While there were dozens of preliminary tornado reports across Alabama, Georgia and Kentucky, Autauga County was hit particularly hard. The wind intensity was rated at least an EF-3 by the National Weather Service, meaning it had gusts of at least 136 mph. Teams continued to survey damage in the area on Sunday, the National Weather Service office in Birmingham said, to determine whether the same tornado continued through Coosa and Tallapoosa counties.

“This powerful tornado ripped through Autauga County leaving behind great destruction of homes and property for many, many miles,” the sheriff’s office said. “Hundreds of homes in the areas of Old Kingston, Posey’s Crossroads, White City and Marbury have been damaged or destroyed.”

At least nine people were killed in the spate of storms overall, with two others killed in Georgia, including a 5-year-old boy and a state Department of Transportation worker, identified in a memo to department employees as Sean Kornacki.

“He was tragically killed in the line of duty early this morning while responding to clear debris in the road following last night’s storms,” the memo from Commissioner Russell R. McMurry said.

The approval makes federal funding available to those impacted in Autauga and Dallas counties, the release said, adding assistance can go toward “grants for temporary housing and home repairs, low-cost loans to cover uninsured property losses, and other programs.”

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Willock, 20, and LeCroy, 24, were among four people in the vehicle at the time of the crash, which happened around 2:45 a.m. on Sunday not far from the UGA campus in Athens, WXIA reported.

“Devin and Chandler were two special people who meant so much to the University of Georgia, our football program and our athletic department,” the UGA Athletic Association said in a statement. “We ask that everyone keep their families in your prayers during this very difficult time.”

Willock, a redshirt sophomore from New Milford, New Jersey, played on the offensive line in all 15 of the team’s games this year, according to Georgia’s football roster.

Two other members of the football program were injured in the crash and are in stable condition at a hospital, the university said. The two others who were injured have not yet been identified.

CNN has reached out to the Athens-Clarke County Police Department to obtain a copy of the incident report.

Hours earlier, the UGA players, coaches and fans packed into Sanford Stadium to celebrate their second straight national championship. Many offered condolences and memories of the two.

“We are all heartbroken and devastated with the loss of Devin Willock and Chandler LeCroy,” UGA Head Football Coach Kirby Smart said in a statement Sunday morning.

“Devin was an outstanding young man in every way. He was always smiling, was a great teammate and a joy to coach. Chandler was a valuable member of our football staff and brought an incredible attitude and energy every single day. We grieve with their families for this tragic loss and will support them in every way possible,” the coach added.

University President Jere W. Morehead remembered Willock and LeCroy in a statement Sunday morning.

“Our thoughts and prayers are with their families and friends. We also pray for the full recovery of those injured in this tragic accident.”

Georgia linebacker Nolan Smith said the deaths “hurt my heart man, all I have to say the GREAT ONES LEAVE TO SOON,” he wrote on Twitter. “@DevinWillock I LOVE YOU FOREVER.”

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