Rainstorm Swells County’s Rivers and Reservoirs : Weather: The front leaves two inches of moisture. At least three more storms are forecast to move into the area next week.

A storm Friday dropped more than two inches of rain in parts of Ventura County, swelling rivers and reservoirs and prompting Ventura Beach RV Resort operators to warn campers of the possibility of flooding.

The National Weather Service issued a flash-flood watch for thundershowers in Ventura and Los Angeles counties on Friday. Rainfall was so heavy in the Thousand Oaks and Santa Paula areas Friday afternoon that the California Highway Patrol issued advisories warning motorists that visibility was reduced to less than 100 feet in some patches.

But the rainfall--forecast to diminish to scattered showers today--was not expected to cause problems worse than street flooding, said Dolores Taylor, Ventura County hydrologist and engineer.

The county’s watersheds have had 10 days to dry out since the last wet period, she said. By contrast, the county had been drenched with nearly 10 days of rain when the Ventura River jumped its banks and inundated the recreational vehicle park Feb. 12.

“This rain has been so gentle for the most part that it is just going to soak in,” Taylor said. “There should be no flooding or over-topping (of river banks) from this storm.”

But Taylor said it is important for people who are camped in the RV park, which was built in a channel of the normally dry Ventura River, to be prepared in case a flood occurs.

“We have advised them (park operators) to at least make sure that people are aware that a flash-flood watch has been called,” she said.

Susie Riggs-Orm, a store clerk at the resort, said Friday that campers in each of the 20 occupied sites were being notified that the area is prone to flooding during winter storms.

But she said the campers, some of whom were living at the park before Feb. 12, did not seem overly concerned.

“We’ve only had one man who even came to ask about” the rain, she said.

Friday’s storm was forecast to be the first in a series of at least three fronts carrying substantial moisture for the area.

After off-and-on showers today, skies are expected to be partly clear Sunday. A milder storm front is due Monday evening, followed by a wetter storm in midweek. Yet another storm could move into the county by next weekend, said Terry Schaeffer, National Weather Service meteorologist in Santa Paula.

“It looks like we’re into another wet cycle for the next week to 10 days,” Schaeffer said. “It’s hard to imagine a better rain year at the end of a drought.”

The rain boosted levels in the county’s two main reservoirs, prompting United Water Conservation District officials to predict that Lake Piru will be full and spilling by the end of the month.

The lake has not reached that point since 1983, said James T. Gross, manager of the district’s ground-water section.

“We’re not spilling yet,” Gross said. “But we’re less than 10,000 acre-feet away.” Water from Lake Piru, which has a capacity of 89,000 acre-feet of water, is used to help refill ground-water basins that supply growers and cities in the Santa Clara River Valley and the Oxnard Plain.

The Freeman Diversion dam on the Santa Clara River has already captured 40,000 acre-feet of water to replenish the underground basins since the rain year began Oct. 1, Gross said.

At the western end of the county, Lake Casitas, the county’s largest reservoir, now has more than 182,000 acre-feet of water stored. That is substantially short of the 254,000-acre-foot capacity, but the lake is on the rise, said Richard Hajas, assistant general manager of the Casitas Municipal Water District.

“It’s really taken a lot of the heat off as far as trying to manage a water-allocation program,” he said. “This gives us time to work with the individual customers.”

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County Rainfall

Here are rain statistics from 8 a.m. Thursday until 5 p.m. Friday from the Ventura County Flood Control District. Rainfall since Oct. 1, the start of the official rain year, is an estimate based on computer updates.

Rainfall Rainfall Normal rainfall Location since Thursday since Oct. 1 to date Camarillo 1.16 15.74 11.10 Casitas Dam 1.42 24.85 19.62 El Rio .65 16.24 12.59 Fillmore 2.02 23.02 15.80 Moorpark 1.64 18.60 12.10 Ojai N/A N/A 17.64 Upper Ojai 1.65 28.93 19.21 Oxnard 0.97 16.46 12.07 Piru 0.55 21.55 14.16 Port Hueneme 1.22 16.22 11.71 Santa Paula 1.57 22.97 14.81 Simi Valley 1.64 21.44 11.80 Thousand Oaks 2.01 22.54 12.64 Ventura Govt. Center 0.98 17.09 13.42