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Record rain turned rivers into rapids while snow trapped trucks in the California high country. In Los Angeles, officials feared the worst after a car was swept away and smashed into the bottom of a bridge.

Feet of snow, inches of rain and persistent threats of mudslides have made much of Southern California a weather warzone this week and turned travel into a treacherous pursuit.

In downtown Los Angeles, a daily record of 2.16 inches of rain was recorded on Tuesday, more than doubling the previous daily record originally set in 1888. The deluge marked the city's wettest day in nearly four years, dating back to Jan. 22, 2017.

Downpours were even more extensive in other portions of the state, as more than 4.5 inches were recorded in both Oakland and San Francisco.

Power outages from the storminess left thousands of Los Angeles residents in the dark on Tuesday, affecting as many as 6,000 customers, ABC7 reported.

The rain wreaked havoc on vehicles surrounding the Los Angeles River, as three cars were washed away by the rapidly rising water levels. Members of the Los Angeles Fire Department struggled to reach the vehicles due to the strong river currents on Tuesday morning.

The first incident occurred as a result of a rollover crash. According to KTLA, no vehicle was found at the scene of the accident when firefighters arrived, as witnesses say the car had been washed away into the river.

A couple of hours later, the white sedan was seen in the water pinned against a support column underneath a bridge. While it was unclear if the vehicle was occupied at that time, no rescue efforts were made due to the dangerous water conditions.

“There’s no way that an individual can survive that,” LAFD spokesperson Erik Scott said. “It would be what we call a recovery effort at this point.”

While first responders were analyzing the wreckage of the first vehicle, a second car floated down the river and became "stacked" atop the first car, LAFD said.

Soon after, a third vehicle also washed past the same bridge and was carried farther down the river.

In the Los Angeles County neighborhood of Sylmar, a man required rescuing after falling into the river and finding himself trapped in an underground channel. Officials from the LAFD said they were alerted by a phone call from the man, who knew he was underground but didn't know precisely where.

“We knew he was underground, but we weren’t sure exactly where. He just knew he was somewhere underground," LAFD Capt. Travis Warford told KTLA. "We went to the manhole cover, and we could actually hear him yelling."

Rescuers managed to save the man by removing the manhole cover and guiding the resident out.

But even despite all that, some of the state's most perilous roads were actually far away from the city. In the high country, avalanche warnings were in effect for areas of the eastern Sierra Nevada range, including near Lake Tahoe.

There, the popular Kirkwood Mountain Ski Resort was forced to close on Monday due to unsafe snow conditions, according to The Guardian, which reported 17 inches of snow with heavy winds.

“It’s just so bad and so thick,” California Highway Patrol Officer Carlos Perez told the news outlet. “We’re telling people that if they don’t need to be around this area, they probably shouldn’t travel.”

After a dismal start to the snowpack season, with just 19% of the normal snowpack as of Dec. 10, Mother Nature made up for lost time this week. But for as good as that news is for skiers, it has been terrible for drivers.

At Donner Pass, semi-truck drivers were forced to pull over and wait out the near-zero visibility conditions from snow squalls. Even when drivers could manage to maneuver their vehicles, other weather-induced headaches ensued.

For eight hours from Monday night to Tuesday morning, a downed live power line forced the California Department of Transportation (Caltrans) to shut down access to a 70-mile stretch of the highway between Colfax and the Nevada state line. While it was closed, feet upon feet upon feet of snow piled on the roadways.

According to SFGate, 6 feet of snow has fallen on Mount Rose, while Sugar Bowl and Palisades Tahoe have both reported more than 4 feet of snow from this storm.

Atop Donner Pass resides the UC Berkeley Central Sierra Snow Laboratory, which also recorded multiple feet of snow. Researchers there said 3 feet fell in a 24-hour span on Tuesday morning, bringing the total to more than 5 feet of snow since Saturday.

"On the summit today, it's pretty close to being that champagne powder," Andrew Schwartz, lead researcher at the snow lab, told SFGate. "I was on my snowshoes, and I have very big snowshoes to keep afloat, and they were sinking 2, 2.5 feet into the snow."

Elsewhere, places like the Lake Tahoe area, which battled impacts from wildfires over the summer, was transformed into a winter wonderland after snow blanketed the landscape.

That heavy snow has continually proven disastrous for drivers in mountainous regions. The California Highway Patrol of Gold Run, located in the mountains of Placer County, urged travelers to slow down with a photo of what happens when speed limits are ignored.

"Slow down when you are driving in the snow or this could happen to you! Thankfully the driver is okay. Remember the speed limit is 30 on snowy roads," CHP Gold Run said on Twitter.

For the latest weather news check back on AccuWeather.com. Watch the AccuWeather Network on DIRECTV, Frontier, Spectrum, fuboTV, Philo and Verizon Fios. AccuWeather Now is now available on your preferred streaming platform.

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For most people, Northern California calls to mind windswept beaches and towering Redwoods or perhaps the sunny slopes of the Sierra Nevadas. But between the green expanses of the Central Valley and the steep moutainsides that surround Lake Tahoe’s deep blue waters lie the rolling hills of the Sierra Foothills, a lesser-visited region but one steeped in history.

California’s Gold Country is home to an iconic family-run roadside fruit stand and pie shop and a handful of destination wineries. In Sacramento, you can drink your way around some of the region’s top breweries and in Sonora, you can get a taste of state history. With a charming main street and a number of exciting food and beverage businesses, Amador City makes a great weekend getaway for anyone interested in exploring the area. Here’s a suggested itinerary for making the most of a 24-hour Gold Country getaway.

9 a.m. Coffee at Small Town Food and Wine

14179 Main Street, Amador City

On Saturdays and Sundays, this family-owned restaurant opens early to fuel and caffeinate visitors and locals alike. It’s the work of husband-and-wife owners Matthew Carter and Ginger Budrick-Carter, whose father Jerry Budrick was on the opening staff at Chez Panisse, where he later became a partner. There’s a full selection of coffee and espresso drinks, plus a rotating selection of pastries, which you can take to-go or grab a seat on the tables out front and take in the view of Amador City’s quaint main street.

10 a.m. Brunch at Imperial Hotel and Restaurant

14202 Old Highway 49, Amador City

Next, head up to the top of Main Street for brunch at the newly renovated Imperial Hotel. The six-room historic hotel, originally built in 1879, now houses a restaurant and bar — the latter of which makes a nice option for a nightcap if you’re planning to stay the night. Brunch, served Saturday and Sunday from 9:30 a.m. to 2:30 p.m., includes options such as savory scallion-cheddar-bacon pancakes topped with a fried egg and toasted brioche with cheese and seasonal jam. If you’re still looking for caffeine — or to start boozing — explore the list of cocktails and espresso drinks.

12 p.m. Explore Amador City shops

Amador City calls itself “California’s Smallest Hometown,” and it’s one of the state’s geographically smallest incorporated cities at just 0.3 square miles in all. Which is to say, it shouldn’t take too long to walk the wooden sidewalks of Main Street and explore the mix of antique stores and boutiques. Made in Amador is a delight, selling everything from floral arrangements to candles, much of it locally made. The store also stocks prints from 3 Fish Studios, Eric Rewitzer and Annie Galvin’s art gallery that closed its Outer Sunset location in 2020 when the duo relocated to the Sierra Foothills.

2:30 p.m. Wine tasting at Turley Wine Cellars

10851 Shenandoah Road, Plymouth

It’s about a 15-minute drive from Amador City to Turley Wine Cellar’s Amador County tasting room, which has a casual indoor bar and a spacious covered outdoor patio. Winemaker Tegan Passalacqua is known for harnessing the power of some of the country's oldest vines into award-winning California zinfandels. Tastings cost $25 and reservations are required.

4 p.m. Visit Amador Flower Farm

22001 Shenandoah School Road, Plymouth

Just a couple of minutes up the road lies Amador Flower Farm, where the public can explore 14 acres of gardens including growing grounds, a potted plant area, and various landscaped demonstration gardens. More than 1,200 varieties of daylilies burst forth during the spring, and gardeners will love the gift shop, which stocks seeds and garden tools, plus windchimes and seasonal decor. Check the farm website for any special events but no matter the weekend, guests are welcome to spread out for a picnic or just wander the grounds.

6 p.m. Wine tasting at End of Nowhere

??14204 Main Street, Amador City

Winemaker Chris Walsh worked in a New York City wine bar that specialized in organic, biodynamic, sustainable wines, which eventually inspired him to move back home to Amador and open one of the county’s only natural wineries. End of Nowhere’s super-chill tasting room offers a remarkably affordable $5 five-wine tasting, which might include a carbonically mascerated zinfandel or a skin-fermented blend of pinot gris and pinot grigio. If you’re in luck, they’ll be grilling burgers – a local favorite – on the back patio, where you can kick back and listen to the creek running by.

7 p.m. Beer and dinner at Breakeven Beermakers

14141 Old Route 49, Amador City

Wrap up your day on Breakeven Beermakers’s creekside beer garden. As the sun sets, order a fresh pint, likely brewed on-site in the brewery’s vintage copper Vendome boil kettle and lauter tun. Beer maker Aaron Wittman favors producing mid- to low-ABV, drier, and sessionable beers, and the ambitious Gold Country brewery focuses on local ingredients whenever possible – think, hops grown on the brewery’s own Banded Family Ranch and malt sourced from Alameda’s Admiral Maltings. The taproom’s full kitchen offers a range of snacks, sandwiches, and fuller entrees including a rotating pasta and a meatloaf dinner. The meatloaf sandwich is a fan favorite, built around a thick slice of meatloaf draped in melted cheese.

GOLD RUN, Calif. (KCRA) —

Caltrans was forced to indefinitely close recently updated and just reopened rest stops in the Gold Run area after people flushed objects not intended for the wastewater treatment system.

Some of those products include diapers, feminine products, leftover food and syringes.

However, that's not the only problem.

Residents and business owners in the Gold Run area said the closure of the eastbound and westbound rest stops has exacerbated another issue: Sierra travelers who believe they can relieve themselves wherever they please.

"Travelers come up to this street to use our yard, not only as a dumping ground but to urinate and defecate in our yard," said Crista Huffman, who lives near Main Street and Magra Road.

Huffman and her husband, who moved to the area 14 years ago, installed a wire fence to keep people from trying to get on their property. One time a family tried to toboggan on their land.

"I had one woman come up here; she had her two kids -- my dogs were barking. I came out to ask her what she was doing," Huffman said." Obviously, I saw what she was doing, and I told her, I said, 'I don't do that in your yard.' She looked at me like a deer in headlights and put her kids in the car and drove off."

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Huffman said she's had to clean up trash and diapers left behind by people who lack respect for Sierra environment. It's been a steady problem over the years, she said.

That problem, according to Sandee Bell, owner of Mountain Springs Hitch-n-Post, has been made worse by the closures of the rest stops.

"People defecating, leaving trash, not cleaning up after themselves. This is kind of our backyard, so we want to keep it clean. The rule is pack it in, pack it out and take extra," she said.

Bell said she once watched as a father brought his son to the side of her bar to use the bathroom.

"We don't go to your home and dump our trash and defecate in your yard. So, don't do it here," she said.

The California Highway Patrol in Gold Run is aware of the issues, too. Officer Tim Brown said it must be addressed.

"It's disgusting, and it is a public safety hazard," Brown said. "They care less and less about the trash, and they're more willing to just throw things onto the freeway thinking someone else will pick it up. It does seem like it's gotten worse over the years."

Brown said his fellow officers often find feces on the highway, as well as bottles full of urine.

"People pull over on the side of the road and they step in it. People drive through it. The freeway smells," he said.

Catching people in the act is hard. He said most offenders wait until dark or when no one is around to dump their trash or use the bathroom.

Caltrans first closed the Gold Run area rest stops last May to get the water delivery and wastewater treatment systems up to current state code.

Once that work was completed, the rest stops reopened Dec. 19.

A little more than a month later, Caltrans was forced to shut down the rest areas again because of the public's misuse of the toilets. It led to a pump failure.

The project cost $6.2 million and was funded through the State Highway Operations and Protection Program.

MARYSVILLE, Calif. (AP) — California officials on Tuesday said they will spend about $60 million to build a channel along the Yuba River so that salmon and other threatened fish species can get around a Gold Rush-era dam that for more than a century has cut off their migration along the chilly waters of Sierra Nevada streams.

What You Need To Know

The project is the latest example of state and federal officials trying to reverse the environmental harms caused by the century-old infrastructure along California's major rivers and streams. Those dams and canals allowed the state to grow into the economic powerhouse it is today. But they have devastated natural ecosystems that have pushed salmon — a species once so abundant it sustained Native American populations — to the edge of extinction.

Last year, federal regulators approved the largest river restoration project in U.S. history that will remove four dams along the Klamath River near the Oregon-California border. State and federal officials have plans to remove other dams that impede fish migration, including the Matilija Dam in Ventura County and the Rindge Dam in Los Angeles County.

Tuesday's announcement will affect the Daguerre Point Dam near the Northern California city of Marysville. The federal government first built the dam in 1906 as a way to stop the seemingly endless flow of debris left over from hydraulic mining during the height of the Gold Rush of the mid 1800s.

The dam is mostly underwater, allowing the water to spill over the top of it while holding back a mountain of sediment. But it also blocks three species of fish from migrating up the river to spawn — spring-run Chinook salmon, steelhead trout and green sturgeon.

The National Marine Fisheries Service declared in 2012 that the dam posed a threat to the survival of those fish species. Coming up with a solution has been difficult as the dam has been mired in controversy for nearly 50 years about who is responsible for its maintenance and management.

“Within a few decades, Gold Rush mining created impacts that have lasted over 150 years. We’re finally taking action to reverse those impacts,” Willie Whittlesey, general manager of the Yuba Water Agency, said Tuesday during a news conference attended by Gov. Gavin Newsom and other state, local and federal officials.

The three fish species are born in the cold, freshwater rivers filled with snowmelt from the Sierra Nevada. Once they hatch and grow big enough, they migrate through the river delta to the Pacific Ocean. They then return to the rivers, swimming upstream to where they were born to lay more eggs.

Dams stop the fish from reaching their spawning grounds. It's a big reason why populations have plummeted, along with droughts and diversions that reduce the flow of water in rivers while increasing the temperature of the water. Commercial salmon fishing was closed along much of the West Coast earlier this year because of low fish populations.

Aaron Zettler-Mann, interim executive director and science director for the South Yuba River Citizens League, said he is excited about the idea of large amounts of fish finally being able to bypass the dam. But he said it's still not the best solution for the species.

He said fish naturally swim upstream and aren't looking for side channels to bypass dams. Plus, he said the river has lots of gravel in it that will eventually clog the channel, making it difficult for fish to use it without regular maintenance.

Instead, he said the best option would be to remove the dam entirely, something he says at least two studies from the federal government have pointed to within the past 20 years.

“I think that if those people stood there together and said, ‘Hey, we want to pull this dam out,’ they probably could have gotten the political will to make it happen,” he said.

Whittlesey said the dam still has its uses, including making it easier to divert water from the Yuba River for nearby farms.

Chuck Bonham, director of the California Department of Fish and Wildlife, said the channel will mimic the natural flow of the river before it was dammed. Once opened, he said it will give fish another 12 miles of habitat.

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Officials plan to install new screens to keep the fish from getting into the other canals that send water to irrigate agriculture. And they are planning to study taking spring-run Chinook salmon above New Bullards Bar Dam further north along the Yuba River.

“Not all dams should be removed. Most of our infrastructure is essential, and it still serves a useful purpose,” Bonham said. “So you get creative.”

Scott Artis, executive director of the Golden State Salmon Association, said non-governmental organizations working along the Yuba River were not included in the planning of this channel.

“Thus, it’s hard to comment, as we simply have not seen the terms of the deal,” he said. “In principle, we support both passage around Daguerre Point Dam and reintroduction to the upper Yuba. But the details matter.”

The project will cost $60 million, with $30 million coming from the state and the rest coming from the Yuba Water Agency. Gov. Gavin Newsom said keeping the funding in the budget is a priority for him despite the state facing a nearly $32 billion budget deficit this year.

“Despite a modest deficit, we’re holding the line on these projects,” Newsom said Tuesday. “These are tangible. You can see the fruits of your tax dollars.”

1. Highway 49. No road in California combines history and scenery the way this one does. Pretty stretches abound — Coloma south to Placerville is especially good, as is the portion from Angels Camp to Sonora.

2. Malakoff Diggins State Historic Park. The park’s dramatically eroded landscape is a remnant of the world’s largest hydraulic mine, where water cannons were used to wash away whole mountainsides in the search for gold. Open daily; 26 miles northeast of Nevada City via Highway 49, Tyler Foote and North Broomfield roads. (530) 265-2740; http://malakoffdigginsstatepark.org.

3. Nevada City. One of the most attractive and interesting of Gold Country towns, with good shopping along Main and Commercial streets. www.nevadacitychamber.com

4. Empire Mine State Historic Park. The site of what was once one of the largest, deepest, longest and richest gold mines in California, the park contains mining buildings, the mine owner’s home, gardens and 8 miles of trails. Open daily; 10791 E. Empire St., Grass Valley; (530) 273-8522; www.parks.ca.gov/?page_id=499

5. Marshall Gold Discovery State Historic Park. Where it all began: museum, miners’ cabins, a full-size replica of Sutter’s Mill, and a great spot to try your hand at gold panning. Open daily; 310 Back St., Coloma; (530) 622-3470; www.parks.ca.gov/?page_id=484

6. Placerville Hardware. Oldest hardware store west of the Mississippi, second oldest business in California and an amazing, organized jumble of cool stuff. Open daily; 441 Main St., Placerville; (530) 622-1151.

7. Amador Flower Farm. In the Shenandoah Valley, an attraction that isn’t a winery: a 14-acre nursery, with an especially spectacular collection of day lilies. 22001 Shenandoah School Road, Plymouth; (209) 245-6660; www.amadorflowerfarm.com

8. Sutter Creek. Another unusually appealing Gold Country town. Stand-out attractions include live music at the Sutter Creek Theater (www.suttercreektheater.com) and a brace of winery tasting rooms. www.suttercreek.org

9. Daffodil Hill. The pioneer McLaughlin family began planting bulbs here in the 1880s; now the hill nurtures 300,000 bulbs that normally flower mid-March through mid-April. 18310 Rams Horn Grade Road, near Volcano; (209) 296-7048 (call ahead).

10. Murphys. Another Gold Country town that has gone from drowsy to chic, with downtown tasting rooms and a number of good places to eat. www.visitmurphys.com

11. Columbia State Historic Park. One of the best-preserved Gold Rush towns is both a historic park and a thriving small town. Admire the 19th century architecture, grab a cone at the Fallon Ice Cream Parlor. Open daily; 11255 Jackson St. Columbia; (209) 588-9128; www.parks.ca.gov/?page_id=552

12. Railtown 1897 State Historic Park. Climb aboard a late 19th century steam train for a ride through the foothills. Park open for tours daily; trains operate weekends April-October. 10501 Reservoir Rd., Jamestown; (209) 984-3953; www.railtown1897.org

13. California Mining and Mineral Museum. Gems, a replica gold mine tunnel and the Fricot Nugget. Open Thursday-Sunday; Mariposa County Fairgrounds, Highway 49, Mariposa; (209) 742-7625; www.parks.ca.gov/?page_id=588