Latest Rain Puts Residents on Edge : Storm: No flash-flood watches are issued, though officials warn of potential problems. Some clearing is forecast for today.

Ventura County’s latest drenching--a band of tropical moisture that dumped less than an inch of rain on soggy plains and canyons--was expected to give way this morning to cooler temperatures and partly cloudy skies.

“There’s just really not much to this rain event,” said Clay Morgan, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Oxnard.

And although forecasters did not issue flash-flood watches Saturday, county officials warned that even the light to medium rain falling by early evening could cause problems for motorists and trigger new mudslides.

On California 33, the steady showers left puddles that partially filled potholes chipped out earlier in the week. And in the muddy Foster Park neighborhood north of Ventura, residents who thought the worst was over braced for a new threat: the cresting of the Lake Casitas reservoir.

“We’re working for our lives to save this place,” said Monica Roberts, whose two-story A-frame house sits near Coyote Creek below Casitas Dam.

At 4 p.m., Roberts’ husband, Stan, was working to clear debris from the rapidly flowing creek as a friend dug out silt with a backhoe.

On Tuesday, when the heaviest rains fell, the Roberts’ home on Casitas Vista Road was surrounded by water when a flash flood rolled down Red Mountain above Foster Park.

A wave of water destroyed the Roberts’ driveway and swept three parked cars into Coyote Creek after a drainage channel on the mountain became clogged.

The cars blocked the flow of the creek, sending two feet of water into a guest house on the property and allowing silt to build up in the stream bed. Frustrated that the county would not send help to remove the cars, the Roberts eventually hired a private contractor to clear the creek.

On Friday, county officials warned residents along Coyote Creek that the lake was three feet below capacity and rising. They said it would probably spill within the next two weeks if the county received intense rainfall of four inches or more.

The Roberts, however, said they were taking no chances. By evening, they had moved all their furniture to the second floor and packed clothing and other belongings in a rental truck parked on higher ground.

“This is like the move before the checkmate,” Stan Roberts said. “We can see what’s going to happen.”

In other parts of the county, where the rain was less of a threat, residents said they were simply weary of the weather.

“I’d like to see some California sunshine,” said Melissa Lawrence, a Red Cross volunteer working at a disaster assistance center in Ventura for flood victims.

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Only seven families visited the center on its opening day, a low turnout that workers attributed to the rain. The center, at the Ventura County Fairgrounds, will be open daily from 9 a.m. until 7 p.m. for at least a week.

As the rain tapers off today, daytime temperatures are expected to fall to the mid-50s, with nighttime lows dipping into the 40s. Snow levels, which have been hovering at about 8,000 feet, were expected to drop to 4,000 or 5,000 feet.

“This is a true Gulf of Alaska storm as opposed to the Central Pacific storms that we’ve been having,” Morgan said.