rivers

In the Sierra Nevada, the snow that blankets the rugged landscape each winter melts and gushes in meadows, streams and rivers, nourishing alpine ecosystems and filling reservoirs.

More than half a million Californians live among waterways in low-lying towns of the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta, where 1,100 miles of levees made of dirt and rocks protect homes from nearby rivers.

Philip Rivers, longtime Chargers quarterback, was on the same wavelength as Allen.

“You could throw behind him and almost talk to him with the ball,” Rivers said.

The breaching of a barrier lake – formed after landslides triggered by another typhoon blocked rivers in a remote mountain valley in July – is the main cause of extensive damage in the eastern county of Hualien, said Huang Chao Chin, the deputy commander of Taiwan's Central Emergency Operation Centre.