California coastal homes battered and bruised after weekend of intense waves and flooding

Boardwalk destroyed in Long Beach and homes damaged, while Baja California in Mexico and Las Vegas also affected

Southern California coastal communities are picking up the pieces after a weekend of extreme weather brought flooding that overtook city streets and intense waves battered beachside homes.

Footage showed massive waves crashing into Long Beach homes, destroying a boardwalk and forcing residents to flee. The damage to homes was significant, leaving some at risk of collapse.

Further south, the city of Newport Beach declared a local emergency and briefly closed piers to “protect public safety”, citing “higher-than-normal surf” that inundated streets.

In Las Vegas, a raging torrent of water rushed over a street near the strip, and the city tied an all-time daily rainfall record for October with 1.08in (2.74cm) of rain into Sunday morning, according to the US National Weather Service.

Colorado State University researcher Phil Klotzbach, who forecasts and studies storm activity, told the Associated Press that the last month has been “berserk”.

California is bracing for a challenging winter with severe storms thanks to an exceptionally strong El Niño. Models from the the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (Noaa) show a high chance this could be a historic El Niño and deliver rainy wet weather, landslides and destructive high tides.