Cold Front Brings Little Rain; More Is on the Way : Weather: Forecasters predict at least two new storms by early next week. Temperatures are 10 degrees below average.

The first of a new series of cold fronts from the Gulf of Alaska on Wednesday sent temperatures plunging well below normal throughout Ventura County but dropped less than a quarter of an inch of rain in most areas.

The cold front drove the snow line to below 5,000 feet, lightly frosting the mountains north of Ojai and flocking the pine trees of the Los Padres National Forest.

The second storm front is expected late today or Friday and a third could hit the area late this weekend or early next week. These should bring heavier rainfall, raising the season’s total by several inches, National Weather Service Meteorologist Terry Schaeffer said.

“Friday’s storm looks pretty potent,” Schaeffer said. “But Sunday’s could miss us to the north and turn out to be a glancing blow.”

Wednesday’s temperatures in Ventura ranged from a low of 44 to a high of 61 degrees. Schaeffer said temperatures will continue to be about 10 degrees colder than usual for this time of year in the coming days.

He forecast daytime highs in the high 50s or low 60s. He said nighttime temperatures as low as 28 in inland valleys will force strawberry growers to protect their crops against frost with sprinklers or wind machines.

But Schaeffer predicted very few if any of the heavy mudslides from hillside erosion that closed roads and sent mud and water oozing across orchards after a tropical storm in late February. That three-day storm, ending March 1, dropped more than six inches at the County Government Center in Ventura, more than nine inches in Santa Paula and more than 12 in Matilija Canyon above Ojai.

“Cold air cannot hold as much moisture as warm air can,” Schaeffer said.

The rains will not break the ongoing drought that entered its fifth year in October, Schaeffer said, but they help ease the pain.

“It’s helping our short-term moisture availability,” he said. “But I don’t think we can look for the end of the drought until next winter, and we don’t know if it will end then.”

County hydrologist Dolores Taylor said that if the three-storm system brings the expected four inches of rain, the county’s rainfall total would climb to about 80% of normal at most measuring stations. The county’s rainfall is now about 60% of normal.

“But we are still way, way low over five years,” she said. “Even if we get four inches by the end of March, we will still need 35 inches of rain to make up for the five years below normal.”

Wednesday’s storm, which dropped only 0.16 of an inch of rain in Ventura and Oxnard and close to half an inch at Casitas Dam, will allow orchard growers to decrease or stop irrigation through the end of the month, said Don Reeder, president of the Ventura County Farm Bureau.

And if the next two storms saturate the trees’ two-feet-deep root zones, orchard growers may be able to stave off irrigating through April, conserving scarce water supplies for later this summer, Reeder said.

Vegetable growers will see a more temporary benefit, as their crops’ shallow roots require moisture in the top two inches of soil, Reeder said. They may have to irrigate within a week or two.

But strawberry growers are damaged by both the moisture and the frost at this time of year. Rain stimulates mold growth, which requires more intense fungicide spraying. And the frost damages the spring fruit, which usually brings high returns at the marketplace because they are the year’s first berries.

“But you’ll get no complaints from me on the rain,” Reeder said. “The strawberry growers are taking it a little bit on the chin on this, but that’s the breaks.”