California braced for more stormy weather as rain began to sweep into the northern part the state and the San Francisco Bay area, raising the potential for road flooding, rising rivers and mudslides.

Regions across the U.S. are expected to get record low temperatures, wind chills and heavy snow, which could make for dangerous conditions for travel and simply being outside.

The winter solstice is the shortest day of the year, and happens when the Northern Hemisphere is pointing away from the sun.

Officials are scrambling to restore water service in northwest Georgia after flash flooding submerged pumps and flooded buildings. Chattooga County officials said Tuesday that taps for 8,000 customers in Summerville, Menlo and surrounding areas would stay dry through at least Wednesday.

The nightly temperature reached 71 degrees Fahrenheit, one of only three nights in the city's climate record where the nighttime temperature rose above 70 degrees.

The summer solstice officially begins at 5:13 a.m. Tuesday on the U.S. East Coast, according to the National Weather Service.

People are flocking to pools, beaches and cooling centers in a swath of the Midwest and South spanning from northern Florida to the Great Lakes, as a heat wave pushed temperatures into the 90s and beyond.

Temperatures will rise into the triple digits across the Southwest and western U.S. this weekend. Daytime temps will be 10 to 20 degrees hotter than normal, according to the National Weather Service.

A meteorologist for NBC Washington paused his live weather report Thursday to call his family about a tornado warning near their home.

Two children, their father and their grandmother were killed when a tornado hit the grandparents' home that didn't have a basement.

A major winter storm was expected to bring up to a foot of snow in the Southern Appalachians, Washington, D.C., and New Jersey on the first Monday of the new year.

According to the National Weather Service, at 3:20 p.m. EDT today, the Autumnal Equinox (the moment when the length of daylight and darkness are almost perfectly equal) occurs.

The hottest place on Earth is as hot as it's ever been, at least in terms of recorded temperatures in modern times.

Elsa is expected to be near the Florida Keys early Tuesday and then pass near or over portions of Florida's west coast by late Tuesday and into Wednesday, forecasters say.

Rick Spinrad previously served as the agency's top scientist. His nomination comes at a difficult period for NOAA, which spent the Trump administration mired in scandal and without a permanent leader.