Drought Remains Despite Drenching Bay Area Receives : Weather: More than two inches of rain have fallen around San Francisco this month. That’s a lot, but officials say they need about 40 inches more.

A new storm system appeared to be heading for Northern California on the heels of a fast-moving storm that flooded streets throughout the Bay Area early Tuesday.

The rain that pelted the San Francisco area Monday night, early Tuesday, and last weekend did little to break the worst drought in California since 1977.

“Every inch helps. But the ground probably soaked a lot of it up,” said Roger Williams of the National Weather Service, adding that not much rain would run off into badly depleted reservoirs around the state.

Williams said there was a good chance that more rain would fall Thursday, and that clouds would begin to gather Wednesday night.

“It’s heading our way. It looks good. We’ll just have to see what it does when it gets here,” Williams said of the approaching storm system.

Rainfall for the year in the Bay Area remains at 45% of normal, Williams said. In February, 2.19 inches of rain has fallen in San Francisco. The normal for the month is 2.83 inches.

State hydrologist Maurice Roos on Tuesday pointed out that in a normal year, 52 inches of rain and snow falls in the Northern Sierra. This year, only eight inches have fallen since the start of the rainy season Oct. 1.

“We’d like to see about 40 inches in the next three months--about double the average. We’re that far behind,” Roos said.

Roos did not hold out much hope for significant precipitation from the weather system that might arrive Thursday. “We’re not too much impressed,” he said. “It is not well organized.”

With state and federal reservoirs at less than 50% of normal levels, and the snowpack in the Sierra Nevada also well below average, state and federal water experts say several more large storms would have to hit California before restrictions on water use could be eased.

State Water Project authorities Monday announced the suspension of deliveries to agricultural users. Federal authorities plan next week to announce reductions in deliveries from the Central Valley Project to additional agricultural and residential users.

“Even if we have better than normal rain, we’re still looking at a 50% cut” in deliveries from the federal water project, said Jason Peltier, manager of the Central Valley Project Water Assn. Gov. Pete Wilson said after meeting with federal officials Monday that he expected the cutback to be more like 65%.

Asked what it would take to end the drought, Peltier said: “Forty days and 40 nights.”

On Monday night, rain came down so fast that National Weather Service forecasters warned that streams in urban areas might flood. While there was no widespread flooding, the Nimitz Freeway on the eastern shore of San Francisco Bay was closed during the night when three feet of water backed up.

Several other streets also were flooded, there was lightning and thunder during the night, and an inch of rain fell in the Sacramento area by 5 a.m. Tuesday.

As much as 13 inches of snow fell in the Sierra. As much as seven inches of snow fell in parts of Yosemite National Park.

The snowpack around Hetch Hetchy Reservoir, which is in Yosemite and serves 2 million customers in the San Francisco Bay Area, remains at 15% of normal. Less than fives inches of precipitation has fallen since Oct. 1. Normally, 17 inches would have fallen.

“Any storm by itself doesn’t do much good. If we could get 30 more like it, we’d be all right,” said Leo Bauer, head of water resources for the Hetch Hetchy system.