Countywide : Forecasters Expect New Storms Today

Drizzle and scattered showers moved across Ventura County on Monday, marking the start of a series of winter storms that are expected to sweep through Ventura County today, forecasters said.

Weather forecasters are calling for up to an inch of rain near the coast and up to three inches in the mountains by the end of the day. But flood control officials said the back-to-back storms present little threat of serious flooding.

Occasional showers and partly cloudy skies on Wednesday are expected to give way to a second storm late Thursday that could continue through the weekend.

“It’s a very stormy pattern, in terms of one storm after another coming through the California coast,” said Dean Jones, a meteorologist with WeatherData Inc., which does forecasts for The Times.

Flood control officials expect few problems from this wave of storms because they appear to lack the intensity of rains last week.

“This storm doesn’t really look like it’s going to be that serious,” said John Weikel, a county flood control hydrologist.

“But our ground is very, very saturated and it won’t take much rain to get the streams rolling again.”

A spill warning issued last week by the Casitas Municipal Water District to residents living below Lake Casitas Dam remained in effect Monday, said district General Manager John Johnson.

The reservoir, the county’s largest, was about two inches below the spillway, Johnson said. He said the dam was likely to spill over late Monday or sometime today.

“It looks like it has been coming up slowly over the last several days,” said Johnson of the reservoir that is fed by Santa Ana and Coyote creeks. “But we don’t have any way of telling exactly when it’s going to spill until it goes over the dam.”