Sinkhole swallows car as California storm kills four

At least four people have been killed in California’s worst storm in more than five years that also left one female driver swallowed into a massive sinkhole.

The wild storm battered San Diego and Los Angeles, opening up a six metre deep sinkhole that consumed the woman’s car, leaving her trapped for some time before emergency services could access the collapsed road.

The Los Angeles Fire Department said the rescued woman told emergency workers she "thought she was going to die" until she heard firefighters yell down to her.

The savage storm saw a wave of rain and snow that killed at least four people and triggered flooding, mudslides, high winds and power outages.

Los Angeles police confirmed that a 55-year-old man was electrocuted when a tree downed a power line, part of a blackout that saw 60,000 people in Los Angeles without power.

One person was found submerged in a vehicle 137km northeast of Los Angeles while the body of another man was discovered in a creek 64km west of downtown LA.

Vital highways and railways were shut down and sinkholes opened on main roads under the heaviest rainfall in the drought-stricken region in at least five years, according to the National Weather Service.

"It's been a very active winter and rainy season for the entire state of California," one Los Angeles meteorologist said.

"They needed that because of the drought. But sometimes droughts end with a flood and we've gone from one extreme to the other."

The National Weather Service said it could end up being the strongest storm to hit Southern California since January 1995.

In LA's Sun Valley, 10 cars were trapped in swift-moving water on a roadway and 15 people had to be rescued, the firefighters reported.