A remote section of Interstate 10 collapsed Sunday amid heavy raids in a desert area of California, cutting off traffic between California and Arizona.
The collapse left one driver injured, stranded numerous motorists and complicated travel for countless others for what officials report will be an indefinite amount of time, according to U.S. News & World Report.
The westbound section of the freeway remained intact, but traffic was stopped while it was being inspected as a safety precaution.
The closure will force drivers seeking to use I-10 to travel between California and Arizona to go hundreds of miles out of their way.
Pamala Browne, 53, and her daughter were driving from Flagstaff, Ariz., to Palm Desert, Calif., when they got stranded when the westbound lanes were shut down, according to AP.
"Oh my God, we are so stuck out here," Browne told the Desert Sun newspaper.
The rains came amid a second day of showers and thunderstorms in southern and central California that were setting rainfall records in what is typically a dry month, according to ABC News. As a result, Saturday's 0.36 inch of rain in downtown Los Angeles exceeded the 0.24-inch recorded July 14, 1886, which had been the wettest July day in nearly 130 years.
The storm brought weekend flash floods and power outages and transformed Los Angeles County's coastline into empty stretches of sand when the threat of lightning forced authorities to close 70 miles of beaches.
In an unexpected twist, this is the same storm that helped firefighters advance on two wildfires, one of which forced the closure of another freeway in Southern California over the weekend.
