Waves of heavy rain pounded California on Thursday, flooding streets, triggering a mudslide that destroyed homes and forcing residents to flee communities scorched by wildfires last year.

The powerful system swept in from the Pacific Ocean and unleashed damaging rain, snow and wind across the US west into Wyoming and Colorado after walloping northern California and southern Oregon a day earlier.

The National Weather Service reported staggering rainfall amounts across California, including more than 9.4in (24cm) over 48 hours at one location in the San Bernardino Mountains east of Los Angeles.

The deluge triggered a mudslide in Sausalito, north of San Francisco, that barreled over cars, uprooted trees and sent a home sliding down a hill and smashing into another house.

Water rushes down the stairs of a house near a mudslide that destroyed homes on a hillside in Sausalito. Photograph: Michael Short/AP

A woman was rescued from the splintered wreckage with only cuts and bruises. Susan Gordon was buried under a tree and mud for two hours while fire crews dug her out, her son wrote on an online fundraising page.

A neighbor down the hill, Lisa Molbert, told KPIX-TV that something that sounded “like a tornado” woke her up. At least 50 properties were evacuated from the hillside neighborhood.

The risk of flooding led officials to order people out of areas burned bare by a summer wildfire in the Santa Ana Mountains, with flash flood warnings blanketing a huge swath east and south of Los Angeles.

They also told parts of Laguna Beach to evacuate, while the desert resort city of Palm Springs urged residents to stay where they were because of flooded streets. Flood advisories extended east to Arizona.

Weather was so severe that the Hollywood Walk of Fame had to postpone the dedication of a sidewalk star honoring the band Aerosmith. The Knott’s Berry Farm and Six Flags Magic Mountain theme parks closed.

Conditions proved too wet for the Genesis Open at Riviera Country Club in Los Angeles, where play was halted after less than an hour.

Trouble also persisted in the saturated north, where thousands lost power and flood warnings were in effect for a large area of the upper Central Valley and around the San Francisco Bay Area. Downtown San Francisco received more than 1.75in (4.4cm) of rain over 24 hours.

A flooded creek led authorities to urge about 300 residents to leave a northern California community about 20 miles (32km) west of Paradise, a town destroyed last year by the nation’s deadliest wildfire in a century.

The storm followed more than a week of severe weather in the Pacific north-west and was the latest in a series of storms that has all but eliminated drought-level dryness in California this winter. It’s fueled by an atmospheric river – a plume of moisture stretching across the Pacific Ocean nearly to Hawaii.

Flood water gushes down Leach Canyon near homes in Lake Elsinore, California. Photograph: Watchara Phomicinda/AP

Nearly 37% of California had no level of drought or abnormal dryness, the U.S. Drought Monitor reported Thursday. About 10.5% of the state was in moderate drought, while just over 1.6% was in severe drought. The remainder was in the abnormally dry category. The numbers reflect data gathered up to Tuesday.

Atmospheric rivers are long bands of water vapor that form over an ocean and flow through the sky. Formed by winds associated with storms, they occur globally but are especially significant on the west coast.

Even before the height of the storm, mandatory evacuations were ordered near the wildfire area in the Santa Ana Mountains, where officials said there was a high risk of debris flows.

Tim Suber chose not to leave his hillside neighborhood in Lake Elsinore. He said Thursday that he’d lost count of how many times his family has been evacuated between last summer’s devastating wildfire and this winter’s storms.

The rain was so heavy that “it sounds like a hundred bowling balls a minute are going down the creek” behind his house, Suber said. A neighbor had mud in his pool, but so far the area hadn’t lost power and culverts and washes were handling the runoff.

A state of emergency was declared in Shasta County because of significant storm damage, and thousands of customers lost power. It comes after a fire in the county seat of Redding last summer destroyed more than 1,000 homes and killed eight people.

The storm delayed flights destined for San Francisco international airport, closed the scenic Highway 1 in at least four spots on the central coast and shut down US 395 in the snowy eastern Sierra Nevada.

Wintry weather closed Interstate 80 across much of Wyoming and sections of at least four other highways.

In Colorado, high winds shattered windows and downed power poles, leaving thousands in Colorado Springs without power.