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Los Angeles - More heavy rain spread across parts of California on Sunday and snow piled deeper in the mountains as the state sat under a storm system that already had snowbound motorists and caused flooding.

Atleast six deaths in the region have been blamed on the storms.

The latest in a series of storms was blamed for at least four weekend deaths in Southern California, including a homeless man killed Sunday by a landslide. Along the storms' eastward track, two people were killed Saturday by separate avalanches in Utah, authorities said.

Up to 15cm of rain was expected Sunday in Southern California with at 60cm of snow possible in the region's higher mountains. In Northern California's Sierra Nevada and northern Nevada, winter storm warnings were in effect through Tuesday morning with as much as 1,5m of new snow possible on top of Saturday's accumulations of up to 1,35m.

Dozens of Sunday church services and all weekend high school sports events were cancelled around Reno, Nevada, because the area got 46cm of snow. The region was still digging out from a December 30 storm that dumped as much as 2,7m of snow in the Sierra and 1,2m in the Reno area.

"A combination of two storms of this magnitude hasn't occurred in the city of Reno since 1916," National Weather Service forecaster Shane Snyder said.

Major highways across the Sierra between Reno and Sacramento, California, were closed for part of Saturday and the heavy snowfall also delayed passenger trains through the mountains.

Flash flood warnings were posted throughout Southern California and authorities kept close eye on foothill neighborhoods below the San Bernardino Mountains where slopes burned bare by wildfires were especially prone to mudslides.

Two traffic deaths were blamed on wet pavement on Saturday and one man died when he tried to cross a swollen stream in Ventura County, police reported.

On Saturday, up to 1,2m of snow stalled motorists in their cars along an 8km stretch of highway between the Snow Valley ski resort and the Big Bear dam in the San Bernardino Mountains about 145km east of Los Angeles. Rescue crews had to use tracked vehicles to rescue people.

The storms have been caused by cold low pressure off Oregon's coast colliding with a stream of moist air from the southern Pacific, said forecaster Ted Mackechnie of the National Weather Service. - Sapa-AP