2nd Round of Wind, Rain Approaching : Weather: Forecasters predict that a more stable system with gentle showers will arrive today. Cleanup continues after violent gusts wallop the area.

Ventura County received a sunny respite from the rain Thursday, but a second storm is expected to move in today--bringing more chilly weather, gloomy skies, rain and wind.

Gentle showers throughout the county today and tonight are expected to drop up to half an inch of rain, resulting in low temperatures in the mid-40s and winds up to 25 mph, said Bob Cari of the National Weather Service in Oxnard.

“It will be a more stable system,” Cari said. “We’re looking at less rains.”

A minor mudslide occurred in an unpopulated area just north of the seaside community of La Conchita after Wednesday’s storm, Ventura County sheriff’s officials said. No one was injured and no property was damaged, but many residents have fled the village for fear that other slides will hit closer to home.

In Thousand Oaks on Thursday, Mayor Andy Fox and other residents cleaned up their debris-strewn yards and surveyed damage after heavy winds raked roofs and knocked down trees and fences in several neighborhoods.

Fox said his wife paged him at a City Council meeting Wednesday night in a panic, saying violent winds had knocked down their fence and left part of a neighbor’s eucalyptus tree in their pool. He left the meeting and drove home.

“It looked like a war zone,” Fox said. “Some shingles got blown off our roof, and my wife said she saw the patio chairs slam against the sliding glass doors. The whole neighborhood was a mess.”

Bill Wiles, music director for the United Methodist Church in Thousand Oaks, said he was in the choir building adjoining the church about 7 p.m. Wednesday when he heard a tremendous rattling sound. In less than a minute, winds sheared off about a fourth of the building’s roof, he said.

“It sounded like a giant vacuum cleaner,” Wiles said. “I’m not from the Midwest, but I thought we had a tornado.

“It happened so fast,” he added. “I came out and looked around and said, ‘Whoa, this had to be big.’ ”

Cari of the National Weather Service said that thunderstorms may have produced unusually stiff winds in Thousand Oaks, but that no tornado had rolled through the city.

“There were some strong winds in the area, and that could have done the damage, but we did not have reports of a wind funnel or a tornado,” he said.

In La Conchita, where a disastrous slide occurred last winter, the rains left a brown trail of mud through the center of several streets.

“There’s a lot of nervous people out there,” said Deputy A.C. Quintero of the Sheriff’s Department’s mobile unit in La Conchita. “This place became a ghost town as soon as it started raining. A lot of residents are wondering what is going to happen right now.”

John Colpitts, who has lived in La Conchita for eight years and owned property in the neighborhood since 1965, has resigned himself to what he sees as the inevitable fact that another mudslide will soon occur.

“It’s going to fall,” said Colpitts, 69, gazing at the infamous hill. “The laws of gravity tell you that much. This is an ongoing thing, and it’s not going to end until that hill comes down.”

Along with the rain, unusually large swells of up to 10 feet are expected to continue pounding the coastline for the next several days, and the National Weather Service extended a heavy surf advisory through tonight.

Nevertheless, local surfers continued to enter the unpredictable waters to take advantage of the swollen waves, which could contain pollutants from storm runoff.

“The water’s disease-infested, for all we know,” said 18-year-old Chad Everard of Ventura, body boarding Thursday near La Conchita with some friends. “It’s still dirty, but it’s a chance we’ll take. The waves are huge.”

Farmers said this week’s mild rainfall was a welcome sight after an unusually dry fall, and today’s storm should be a boon to their crops--as long as it does not all come at once.

“If we can keep that up for the next few weeks until March, that would kind of be ideal,” said Rex Laird, executive director of the Ventura County Farm Bureau. “If we can get an inch or two a week, we could have a great year.”

Rob Brokaw of Brokaw Nursery, which manages an 80-acre avocado orchard in Santa Paula, said this week’s rains splashed a little mud on his pickup, but otherwise had little effect on his business. He is hoping for more rain today.

“Our ground is quite dry and anxious for water,” Brokaw said. “It was a welcome rain [on Wednesday], and we look forward to more.”

But he said that his thirst for rain may soon wane.

“I’m sure before the season’s out we’ll get shellacked,” he said. “It happens every time.”

(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX / INFOGRAPHIC)

County Rainfall

Here are rainfall figures from the Ventura County Flood Control Department for the 24-hour period ending at 8 a.m. Thursday. Oct. 1 is the beginning of the official rain year.

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Rainfall Rainfall Normal rainfall Location last 24 hours since Oct. 1 to date Camarillo 0.16 1.49 3.20 Casitas Dam 0.25 2.63 5.10 El Rio 0.11 1.63 3.24 Fillmore 0.20 1.50 4.58 Moorpark 0.14 1.23 3.35 Ojai 0.16 1.50 4.48 Upper Ojai 0.16 1.74 4.80 Oxnard 0.05 1.01 3.07 Piru 0.10 0.90 3.68 Santa Paula 0.08 1.50 4.08 Simi Valley 0.07 0.78 3.12 Thousand Oaks 0.10 1.07 3.35 Ventura Govt. Center 0.12 1.91 3.43

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