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Melissa Harris-Perry: You're still with The Takeaway.

 Powerful storms have been battering coastal counties in California over the past several days. The National Weather Service has described it as "the most impressive storm since January of 2005." The atmospheric river causing the storms have brought record rainfall in some areas, widespread flooding, and left thousands without electricity. The Takeaway talked with one person caught in the storm.

Isabella: The rain has sucked. I've just been in the van for the past five days and it's been nonstop rain and it's been very annoying and just really not a fun time. Hi, I'm Isabella. I am an elopement photographer and an adventure photographer and I live in a van. Currently, I'm in Ventura, California.

Melissa Harris-Perry: As you can hear there, Isabella's work as a photographer takes her on the road often. While she says that Ventura hasn't seen the worst of the storm, she and her companion, Marlo, have felt a bit stranded.

Isabella: I have a dog, so taking my dog out to go to the bathroom was really frustrating because she does not like to go to the bathroom immediately, so I'm like standing in the rain for like 15, 20 minutes waiting for her to go. I feel bad because she's not getting the exercise that she needs and we're just hunkered down inside. She also really likes drinking from puddles, but there's so much filth and debris in all the water that is being washed into the streets that it's really gross and I don't want her to get sick from drinking anything.

Melissa Harris-Perry: It might seem like a small thing, but those little moments in our lives, they represent what is a disastrous rain situation. While the rain relented a bit on Tuesday, and there's expected to be a window of better weather over the next few days, the forecast this weekend is calling for more rainstorms in parts of the state.

Isabella: I've been also thinking about what my options are to leave because I really wanted to drive to the desert where it's been less rainy, but all the highways and roads are all closed down, and they're telling you to stay put if you're not being evacuated so doing the safe thing instead of doing the thing that I want to do, which is getting the heck out of Dodge, but safety first, so just staying put.

Melissa Harris-Perry: Now, Isabella is clear to point out that living the van life is a lifestyle choice for her, but she does worry about those who are experiencing homelessness or who are left with few options but to simply endure the storm.

Isabella: I'm not forced to live in my van, but it's a privilege to be able to choose this life but thinking about all the people that didn't have a choice and their situations getting washed away and not being able to escape the rain and just dealing with the absolute full effect of what this flooding can mean for them. I'm definitely thinking about them today.

There's a wonderful woman that lives on this street that's also living out of her car. I don't think it's her choice necessarily, but we've talked a few times, and she's really kind and helped me jump my car and just thinking about all the incredible ways that they have to push through and gather their stuff together to make sure that they're set. I think this really just is really difficult for people in those situations.

Melissa Harris-Perry: We've been talking about water this whole show and in this case, water in the form of these rainstorms, it's a serious and potentially life-threatening situation. Thank you to Isabella for sharing her experience and perspective with us and stick with us. We're going to continue on the California rainstorms and be joined by an investigative reporter for the LA Times. Stay with us. It's The Takeaway.

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Melissa Harris-Perry: Hey, all. It's The Takeaway, and we've been talking about the destructive rainstorms across California's coastal counties. Joining me now is Susanne Rust, investigative reporter for the LA Times. Susanne, thanks for joining us.

Susanne Rust: Hey, thanks for having me.

Melissa Harris-Perry: We heard from Isabella about her worries about those who are experiencing homelessness, who are left with very few choices as the rainstorms continue. Can you talk to me about what either local government or nonprofit agencies have stepped up to try to help those who live outside?

Susanne Rust: It's been a crisis, and I live in northern California. I live around San Francisco, and so I've been spending a lot of time in the past few weeks in Santa Cruz County, which has been especially hard hit, and the county officials there are trying to find shelters for people. One of the big issues is that a lot of people who are unhoused live in places like river banks during the dry time or along the coast and those are the places that are really suffering right now.

They are trying to move those people to safe areas, give them shelter, but they're so thinly stretched right now because so much is happening in so many different places. It's really a crisis here.

Melissa Harris-Perry: You mentioned the dry times, and the dry times have been a very long time. Can you set this set of rainstorms in historical context? How long has it been since we've seen something like this in California?

Susanne Rust: It's been quite a while. I was looking at statistics earlier this morning and saw that this is the third wettest year for San Francisco ever, I think 1861, 1862. There's that combined time over the winter there and then again maybe 1865, 1866, those were really, really the wettest times. This is the third, but in recent memory, and this is aging me right now, 1982 is probably the most recent time that anybody can remember rains like this. This has really been an incredible period of just relentless rain that we haven't seen in decades.

Melissa Harris-Perry: How have those dry times, the drought, made all of this rain and all of this water even more destructive?

Susanne Rust: One of the things that happens during the drought, and we've been in historic mega drought, something they haven't seen in-- if they looking back at soil records, for thousands of years. What happens is the soil completely dries out during a period of time like that, and the soil almost becomes like cement, and so when it starts to rain, the rain doesn't go through the soil like it does if there's a little moisture in the soil, it just runs off, and so it's been exacerbating the amount of rain we've had in terms of flooding, swollen rivers runoff, so the drought is really strangely making the flooding a lot worse.

Melissa Harris-Perry: As you mentioned, that sense of local government agencies, even nonprofits, being overwhelmed. Is there a sense that California's either state or local governments were prepared for this, or did it catch everybody off guard, given how historic this is?

Susanne Rust: I think it caught everybody off guard. Again, I live around San Francisco, and on New Year's Eve, we got this just enormous storm. We were supposed to get something like less than an inch of rain, ended up getting, I think, close to five inches in Downtown, San Francisco. Took everybody off guard.

Having said that, it has been incredible to watch all of the different agencies, state, local, nonprofits mobilize, and of course, as this keeps going and going, everybody's getting exhausted, but they're also learning from the days before, where do we need to be? What do we need to be doing?

One of the big deals is just cleaning gutters on the streets to keep those from overflowing, moving people out of the way, putting up pylons, having people not drive through sitting water on roads but we're all learning, but yes, I think everybody was taken off guard by the amount of rain we've had and, again, the relentlessness of it.

Melissa Harris-Perry: It is going to relent at least for a moment here, and as you're talking about how steep this learning curve is and how swiftly local officials are trying to move up it, will the relative pause for a few days before it's supposed to pick back up again this weekend give both communities and officials an opportunity to at least recover and prepare a bit?

Susanne Rust: I think that's the hope. However, the pause-- just to put a little note stick on that, it's raining right now, and it's going to rain throughout today. We're going to get a little pause, I think, tomorrow and it comes back in on Friday.

Yes, there's going to be some time officials will get out, assess what's happened, look at the damage, hopefully, waters begin to recede. Then they have to prepare for the next barrage. Fortunately, looking out on what meteorologists are saying, I think we might have another eight or nine days of it, and then it looks like a high-pressure system moves in, and we're clear. I think everybody's right now just ready to move, and yes, that day, we'll give a little time but not nearly as much as we all need.

Melissa Harris-Perry: In an era of global climate change, does everybody need to become a local meteorologist just to survive?

Susanne Rust: Absolutely. If you look at the past three years of weather in California-- I am an investigative reporter. I generally spend weeks, months working on a story. I've been doing daily news now for about three years because of the climate. We go through wildfires, heat waves, these torrential rains. It's like whiplash.

Melissa Harris-Perry: Oh, Susanne, as someone who has learned the grind, the effort, but also the importance of daily reporting, all the hearts of all of the people of team Takeaway go out to you and to everyone in California dealing with this. Susanne Rust is an investigative reporter and now a daily meteorologist for the LA Times. Susanne, thanks so much for joining us today.

Susanne Rust: Great speaking with you. Thank you.

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