Major Weekend Storm Expected in County : Weather: The new front may arrive tonight or early Sunday. The forecast calls for up to 3 1/2 inches, with the heaviest activity in the mountains.

The second major storm front in a week is forecast to arrive in Ventura County as early as tonight, dropping anywhere from one to 3 1/2 inches of rain on an area still soaking up the remains of the past week’s downpours.

The storm is expected to hit tonight or early Sunday, and will be heaviest in the area where it is needed most--the mountains around Ventura County’s reservoirs, county engineer Dolores Taylor said.

Rain on Thursday and Friday pushed Oxnard, Simi Valley and Thousand Oaks above their average year-to-date rainfall, but Taylor cautioned against the notion that the six-year drought is ending.

“Even after this week’s storms, we’d still need two years of normal rain to undo the damage of the past six years in the coastal plain area,” Taylor said. “In the mountains, where the main reservoirs are, they’re a lot further behind than that.”

Although Lake Casitas has risen about a foot in the past week, the water level is still far below normal, park services manager Doug Ralph said.

Still, Ralph said he is encouraged by the regularity of storms this rainy season.

“At this time last year we were really in pretty bad shape. The rainfall this year is much closer to that of a normal year.”

The rain is not only good for the reservoirs, it is good for fishing, he said. Rangers planted 2,500 pounds of fish in Lake Casitas on Tuesday, and the added water will give them a better chance of surviving, he said.

“As the lake comes up, they’ll be able to hide in brush that gets covered up. It hides them from predators,” he said. Torrential rains are not necessarily best for parched areas, Ralph said. “If the rain keeps coming gently, with an inch or two a day for weeks at a time, well, that would be really good for us.”

Light, gradual rains are preferred to large storms, Taylor said, because of their impact on ground saturation. Heavy rains often saturate the ground and cause subsequent precipitation to be lost as runoff rather than absorbed into reservoirs, she said.

Although there was some runoff on city streets earlier this week, the problem is not likely to occur this weekend, Taylor said.

“We’re not expecting any major runoff, and with the ground as wet as it is, every drop should soak in and run into the reservoirs,” she said.

Growers said they would be thankful for any rain that falls, but didn’t expect much of the storm’s bounty to get to their crops.

“If the 3 1/2 inches were on the Oxnard Plain, that would be different,” said Rex Laird, executive director of the Ventura County Farm Bureau. “Probably only an inch will fall in Oxnard, and I don’t see an inch making that much of a difference to growers.”

The aftereffect from Friday’s rainfall was a far cry from the flooding and mudslides caused by storms earlier in the week. The California Highway Patrol did not respond to a single rain-caused accident, public information officer Jim Utter said.

Other Ventura County law enforcement agencies were also unaffected by Friday’s rains.

This weekend’s storm will be colder and more windy than its predecessor, said meteorologist Steve Burback of Weather Data, a private firm that does forecasts for The Times.

“The last one came from southwest of California. It was more tropical,” Burback said. “This one is from the Gulf of Alaska and there will be more winds and colder temperatures nearer inland. Along the coast it won’t change a lot.”

Snow level in the mountains will probably fall as low as 4,000 to 5,000 feet late Sunday, said Terry Schaeffer, meteorologist for the National Weather Service.

County Rainfall

Ventura County Flood Control District figures since start of official rain year Oct. 1. as of 8 a.m. Friday

Rainfall Rainfall Avg. rainfall Location since Thursday since Oct. 1 Since Oct. 1 Camarillo 0.11 4.13 4.61 Casitas Dam N/A N/A N/A El Rio 0.15 4.47 4.78 Fillmore 0.09 5.10 6.53 Moorpark 0.05 4.43 4.80 Oak View 0.15 4.44 7.01 Ojai 0.20 5.69 6.67 Upper Ojai 0.25 6.62 7.08 Oxnard 0.13 4.72 4.57 Piru 0.03 4.92 5.41 Port Hueneme N/A N/A N/A Santa Paula 0.12 4.79 5.88 Ventura 0.14 3.62 4.57 Simi Valley 0.08 4.69 4.56 Ventura Gov. Center 0.13 4.09 5.08 Thousand Oaks 0.11 5.02 4.86