Heavy rainfall hits California, but much more needed to alleviate state’s harsh drought

Much-needed heavy rainfall has been hitting parts of California this week in a weather system that many hope will help fight — ever so slightly — the state’s ongoing drought.

“The drought has been devastating on so many levels that the rain is most welcome,” Regina Jones, a native Angeleno, told Yahoo News. “You can’t have paradise 365 days a year and expect things to thrive, so we need the water. The storm is a wonderful thing.”

Meteorologist Kathy Hoxsie, of the National Weather Service’s Los Angeles office, said that most of the area got 1 to 2 inches, while the mountains had 2 to 5.

“The fact that it’s nice and steady helped recharge the groundwater and our local reservoirs,” she said in an interview with Yahoo News. “It’s all very important.”

The major storm came with reports of submerged roads, traffic delays and mudslides, but Hoxsie said the storm was just what Southern California needed.

Flash floods, she explained, typically happen when that level of rain falls in a shorter period of time.

“But since it was steady throughout the day, we haven’t had too many problems,” she said.

The National Weather Service, however, did issue flash-flood advisories for several areas that experienced major wildfires during the last dry season.

Meteorologist Jeff Lorens, of the National Weather Service’s Western region headquarters, said “burn scars” on the land in some mountains around Los Angeles and in the Sierra Nevada do not have the vegetation needed to hold back water, which means they can flood quickly.

Though she regrets tragedies that may have occurred, Jones thinks too many Californians put the wet weather out of proportion too easily.

“Based on what goes on in the Midwest and the East, we have no right to complain,” she said. “We’re so spoiled, we don’t know how to drive when it rains. It’s the worst driving you’ve seen in your life.”

A low-pressure system off the West Coast was responsible for the storms in L.A. and San Francisco, explained Diana Henderson, a forecaster for the National Weather Service’s San Francisco office.

The San Francisco storm was punctuated by howling winds and lightning. The rainwater overwhelmed Bay Area drainage systems, creating floods in low-lying areas.

One witness shot a video before high tide on Wednesday morning of particularly bad flooding at the Sausalito boat houses, along the coast near Marin City, just north of San Francisco.

San Francisco's winter weather will weaken as the system continues northeast out of the city.

“The rains have started to taper off a little,” Henderson said. “They will continue to diminish as the day goes on, and we will have residual showers tonight.”

She said it looks as if another storm system may arrive some time next week, but Californians will need many more rains over the next couple of years to truly cure the drought.

“It would take a bit more than what we had now,” Henderson said. “We had a rather large deficit from the last couple of years. One good season does not necessarily alleviate that deficit.”

Lorens estimates that a significant reduction of the drought can be made if California sees 150 percent of normal rainfall for the wet season as a whole, which runs until March or April.

“The drought is severe,” he told Yahoo News. “It’s a long-term thing. It takes a long time to get into it, and it takes a long time to get out.”