Furious Storm Brings Rain, Winds to O.C.

A stalled storm that saturated Santa Barbara and Ventura counties with two to eight inches of rain intensified Monday evening and lumbered south, spawning heavy rain in Orange County, snow and high winds in the mountains, and flash-flood warnings along the coast.

The showers prompted the U.S. National Guard armories in Fullerton and Santa Ana to open their doors to the homeless Monday night.

And the California Highway Patrol said several accidents occurred on county highways soon after the storm began.

Despite the much-needed rain, state officials warned that the five-year drought was far from over. Officials said the critical Sierra Nevada snowpack was still well below normal.

Winds gusting up to 60 m.p.h. knocked out power to much of Tehachapi in Kern County, briefly surrounding a county Fire Department engine company with downed power lines, fire officials said. No injuries were reported.

The National Weather Service issued a high wind warning for 70 m.p.h. winds gusts in the Tehachapi Mountains. Motorists were advised to use extreme caution against being blown off the road.

The California Highway Patrol reported the temporary closures of several Kern County highways because of wind, rain and mudslides.

Sheets of rain slowed traffic to a crawl on metropolitan-area freeways.

“It’s just blind,” a driver reported from the Santa Monica Freeway. “It’s just pouring out here.”

Meteorologist Steve Burback of WeatherData Inc., which provides forecasts for The Times, predicted that the cold front would produce up to three inches of rain in coastal areas and up to five inches of snow in Southern California mountains before moving on today.

Burback expected the wet weather pattern to continue for the rest of the week with a storm Wednesday and another over the weekend.

Water-worried state officials said Monday that the rains of March have improved the drought outlook somewhat, but they added that conditions are only slightly improved in the all-important snowpack in the western Sierra.

“It just nibbled away at the drought a little,” Bill Helms, spokesman for the Department of Water Resources drought center, said of a new round of storms.

Snow measures taken Monday morning indicated that half an inch of water content had been added to the snowpack, but that still left it woefully short of normal conditions, Helms said. The measurements showed water content in the snowpack has reached 14 inches.

“We should be at about 27 inches,” Helms said.

While drought officials continued to dampen hopes in Sacramento, Sen. Bill Bradley (D-N.J.) heard testimony in Los Angeles on a bill he is sponsoring to expand the uses of the federal Central Valley Project, the largest water project in the state.

Viewed as a long-term solution to drought conditions, the legislation would loosen federal rules that limit project water deliveries primarily to farms in the Sacramento and San Joaquin valleys, with some supplies going to urban users in Santa Clara, Contra Costa and Alameda counties. The federal project delivers more than 7 million acre-feet in normal years, about 20% of all of California’s developed surface supply.

In the short term, local officials continued to look to the skies for some relief. Recent rains had undoubtedly improved water supplies somewhat in some areas, including such hard-hit regions as Santa Barbara and the San Joaquin Valley.

In Santa Barbara, enough rain collected in the city’s Gibraltar Reservoir to provide the city with water for the first time since it went dry in November, 1989. The reservoir, which in normal years had provided the community with about 30% of its water, was virtually empty until this month’s rains.

Lake Cachuma, which provides water for many communities in Santa Barbara County, also has added 2,000 acre-feet during the past two weeks or so. Cachuma, which is much larger than Gibraltar and provides Santa Barbara with the majority of its water, is still only about 15% of capacity and is expected to run dry by summer of 1992, officials say.

Even with recent storms, Santa Barbara is far below its average yearly rainfall levels. Since September, there has been only about 10 inches of rain in the area, compared to the average of 15 inches.

“Having Gibraltar producing water again is great news,” said Lisa Weeks, drought spokeswoman for Santa Barbara. “A few more storms back to back could fill the reservoir.”

It was still raining heavily in Santa Barbara on Monday night and to the south in Ventura County where, atop Old Man Mountain, 10 miles west of Ojai, 8.2 inches had been recorded from the storm.

The outlook also brightened Monday in the San Joaquin Valley.

By midafternoon it had been raining continuously for more than 24 hours, with a total rainfall of 1.53 inches in Fresno, raising the season total to 7.26 inches.

Since the beginning of March, almost six inches of precipitation has fallen in Fresno County, raising expectations of the Fresno Irrigation District that it will receive 45% of its water allocation from the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation, instead of the 10% it expected about two weeks ago.

“We’re smiling over here,” said Bill Burmeister, water systems manager for Fresno.

In Sacramento, Helms said the March precipitation is 180% of normal, and if the rains continue, the area could repeat the “March miracle” of 1989, when spring precipitation was a whopping 250% of normal.

The rains ended a critically dry situation that year.

Helms was pessimistic that such a “miracle” will happen this year because 1991----which was the driest rainy season on record going into March----started out much drier than 1989.

Even the dousing the Sacramento Valley got over the weekend had no effect on the state’s big Oroville Reservoir on the Feather River, where summer water supplies are stored, Helms said.

Meanwhile, after enduring a mostly dry winter, the eastern Sierra was blanketed in March by a series of storms--the latest of which dropped 20 inches of new snow on Mammoth Lakes between 10 a.m. Sunday and midafternoon Monday, according to a National Weather Service spokesman.

“It’s really beautiful, it’s just white everywhere,” said Laurie Johnson, owner of the Snow Goose Inn in Mammoth. “We’re not jam-packed yet, but we hope we will be when the word gets out.”

“Everything is pretty and fairy-tale like and that’s what we live in the mountains for,” said Robin Falkingham, owner of the Command Performance ski rental shop in Mammoth. “I think it’s going to be great for the water this summer. At least it will build the snowpack back up and get some runoff.”

State officials are expecting more good news on the weather front in the coming week, Helms said, based on predictions from the state’s meteorologists that the “storm door” remains open.

As the state was reporting slight improvements in the drought picture, federal officials also released new forecasts showing they expect the rains to add 1 million acre-feet more of water to storage supplies by Sept. 30 than they originally anticipated. An acre-foot is the amount of water a typical Los Angeles family of five uses in 18 months.

In Los Angeles, Bradley and Sen. John Seymour (R-Calif.) clashed sharply over the proposal to revamp the federal water project so it will serve more urban areas throughout California. It would also restore fisheries, wildlife habitats and wetlands damaged by project operations over the past 40 years.

Bradley, chairman of the water and power subcommittee of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, said his measure was an effort to overcome the inequitable allocation of water under the federal project.

“How can you blame drought for the fact that after five years of low rainfall, farmers are still growing rice in the desert while millions of other Californians have had to watch their crops or gardens die?” Bradley said.

But Seymour, the first Californian to serve on the Senate’s water committee since 1970, said, “California does not need the federal government to dictate how it should use its scarce water resources.”

The debate in Southern California did little to quash the elation in one Northern California region--around Eureka in Humboldt County--where officials were cautiously proclaiming victory in a battle against this year’s drought conditions.

Rainfall through last weekend was more than enough to fill the 50,000 acre-foot Ruth Lake reservoir that serves 60% of the homes and businesses in Humboldt County.

“We are not concerned at this time,” said Art Bolli, general manager of the Humbolt Bay Municipal District. “The lake is full. We have a little snowpack. And if we have anything close to normal in the way of rainfall for April and May, we’re in great shape.”

Ellis reported from Sacramento and Stall from Los Angeles. Also contributing to this story were Times staff writers John Kendall in Los Angeles, Miles Corwin in Santa Barbara and Joanna Miller in Ventura.