Storms Bring Rain, Snow To Parched California
SAN FRANCISCO (AP) - Drenching storms moving across Northern California on Saturday were helping the state catch up on normal rainfall totals for the year, but forecasters stressed that one rainy weekend would barely move the needle on California's three-year drought.
In the south of the San Francisco Bay Area, television crews turned out to record the sight - uncommon lately - of authorities in Contra Costa and San Mateo counties opening sandbag stations to help residents guard against any local flooding. Across Northern California, the National Weather Service was predicting 1 to 3 inches of rain in low-lying regions and up to 5 inches in the Sierra Nevada mountains.
By late morning in the Bay Area, storms that began overnight brought between three-quarters of an inch of rain in San Jose to more than 3 inches to the north in Napa. No major flooding was immediately reported.
At Donner Pass in the Sierra Nevada mountains, manager Jake Sullivan at the Union 76 service station was watching the couple of inches of snow that fell overnight as it melted, and thinking positive thoughts about more snow to come. In all, up to a foot of snow was expected to fall on high Sierra elevations before the weekend ends, a welcome prospect after a dry winter last year all but killed the winter ski season for many communities.
"This has been a good one," Sullivan said of the weekend storm. "You have to be an optimist up here. Everyone here thrives on snow."
The weather service warned of dangerous rip currents and heavy fog in coastal Southern California, ahead of more expected rain for the state around Tuesday and Wednesday.
In October, California marked what the National Climactic Data Center said was the state's driest three years on record. Even with rain storms earlier this month, state reservoirs remain far lower than normal. Shasta Lake, the largest reservoir, stands at 39 percent of average, and Lake Oroville, the second-largest, at 42 percent, according to the state Department of Water Resources. Scores of California communities have instituted mandatory or voluntary conservation.
"We're so far into a deficit, it's not going to end the drought," Diana Henderson, a forecaster with the weather service's San Francisco Bay Area office, said Saturday morning. California is just starting its yearly rainy season, by the end of it, one rainy weekend like this one "really won't have a huge effect on the drought."
Copyright 2014 The Associated Press.
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