Newest Storm Goes Easier on Area; More Rain Expected : Weather: Traffic is snarled and some power is cut, but flooding is minimal. Forecasters say new front is due Tuesday or Wednesday.

A slow-moving winter storm drenched already-sodden Orange County Saturday, snarling traffic and sparking power outages but causing no major flooding and little additional damage to the battered region.

Forecasters predicted little or no rain today but warned that the respite may be brief, with another storm expected to buffet the Southern California coast beginning Tuesday or Wednesday.

County residents and emergency management officials--still struggling to recover from Wednesday’s record-breaking deluge--had braced for the worst Saturday, but expressed relief when the storm proved less severe than predicted.

“The real saving grace (Saturday) was that the rain came over a 10-hour period--not the intense couple of hours we got on Wednesday,” said Bill Reiter, the county’s public works operations manager.

The total rainfall was considerably less than the county endured during Wednesday’s downpour, which dropped an unprecedented 5.75 inches on Cypress alone. The storm was severe enough that Gov. Pete Wilson Friday declared a state of emergency for Orange and Los Angeles counties and approved $20 million in state aid requested by the Orange County Board of Supervisors to repair public facilities damaged by the storm.

In contrast, Saturday’s slow but steady rain left Santa Ana the wettest spot in the county with 1.45 inches of rain over the 24-hour period ending at 4 p.m., according to officials with WeatherData Inc., which supplies forecasts for The Times. Anaheim received .94 inches of rain, Newport Beach had .78, and San Juan Capistrano and El Toro each received .60.

Today’s forecast calls for mostly cloudy weather with a slight chance of showers in the afternoon and evening, said Curtis Brack, a WeatherData meteorologist. High temperatures are expected to be in the upper 50s to mid-60s, with more cool weather expected Monday.

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The only new damage reported Saturday was in Huntington Beach, where the persistent rain caused sinkholes in two streets hazardous enough that the roads were closed to traffic in both directions early in the afternoon, said Lt. Jon Arnold of the Huntington Beach Police Department.

A two-foot hole in a section of Talbert Avenue, east of Gothard Street, was actually the opening for a large underground sinkhole 15 feet long, 10 feet wide and 6 feet deep beneath the pavement, Arnold said.

Along a portion of Slater Avenue between Golden West Street and Gothard Avenue, the rain caused the pavement to collapse as much as eight inches, Arnold said.

Flooding also caused police to close all eastbound lanes of Pacific Coast Highway, between Golden West Street and Warner Avenue, by early afternoon, Arnold said.

But the majority of the trouble Saturday involved traffic, telephones and power outages, officials said, problems that paled in comparison to the flooded homes, ruptured storm channels and broken streets left behind by Wednesday’s storm.

Reflecting on the severity of last week’s storm, city councils in Cypress and Laguna Beach Saturday declared states of emergency within their communities, clearing the way for state and federal disaster relief.

In Laguna, a city still recovering from 1993’s devastating firestorm, officials said the emergency proclamation marked the 10th such declaration in 15 years.

“It’s becoming routine for us,” joked City Manager Kenneth C. Franks, who has coped with floods, fires and landslides during his tenure. “It’s on the word-processor now.”

But even the areas hardest hit Wednesday--Garden Grove, Seal Beach, Laguna Beach, Cypress and Buena Park--survived Saturday’s rain relatively unscathed, officials said.

Reiter said the county’s storm channels--four of which came apart or sustained major damage last week--worked well on Saturday, with none overflowing or suffering further damage.

“We had a few reports that some of them ran reasonably full early (Saturday), but since then, it’s been no problem at all,” he said. “Even the damaged channels are holding up well.”

In Seal Beach, a catch basin fed by a storm channel that backed up into the Leisure World retirement community last week--forcing the evacuation of more than 300 residents--remained less than half-full throughout the day Saturday, Reiter said.

The American Red Cross, which has opened 10 emergency shelters since the rain began last week, continued to operate two of them Saturday. About 20 people were expected to stay overnight Saturday at the center in Leisure World, but by late evening no one had sought shelter at a second center at Garden Grove’s Rancho Alamitos High School, officials said.

Saturday’s rain wreaked a measure of havoc on Orange County freeways, with more than a dozen weather-related accidents throughout the day, according to the California Highway Patrol. No serious injuries were reported.

Southern California Edison crews worked overtime Saturday to try to restore service to thousands of customers whose power was briefly cut off in Huntington Beach, Costa Mesa, Newport Beach, Seal Beach and Westminster, said area manager Christie McDaniel.

In Huntington Beach, about 2,000 residents along Delaware Street and Yorktown Avenue lost power for three hours early Saturday when a palm tree fell across power lines. Others were temporarily left without power when several transformers short-circuited.

There were also these developments from the storm Saturday:

* In Cypress, Mayor Cecilia L. Age said officials updated their damage estimate from Wednesday’s storm to 350 flooded homes and 200 stalled cars. Earlier citywide estimates placing the total damage within the city at $900,000 are also likely to increase, she said.

At the request of residents whose cars were inoperable because of the rain, city officials delivered 4,000 sandbags Saturday to the Tanglewood neighborhood and other areas.

* In Buena Park, officials with both the county’s public works operations and Caltrans kept watch Saturday over a section of Beach Boulevard that collapsed last week, but reported no further damage.

* In Laguna Beach, the aftermath of last week’s storm was still being felt, with between 500 and 1,000 people still without phone service Saturday.

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Nearly the entire city lost phone service Wednesday night when a flood control channel overflowed, swamping the company’s central switching office in the downtown area with mud and debris, spokesman Mike Murray said.

At the height of the storm Wednesday, 25,000 people in Laguna Beach were without phone service, Murray said. By 11 a.m. Thursday, 80% of the service had been restored, he said.

* Times staff writers Nancy Hsu and Martin Miller and correspondent Tom Ragan contributed to this report.