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The national weather forecast for Sunday, November 29th calls for cold temperatures in the Pacific Northwest as a storm front moves South. VPC
Christopher Sedillo, 13, left; his grandfather, Marcos Lopez; and Samuel Mosqueda fill sandbags in 2008 at Visalia Fire Station 54.(Photo: Teresa Douglass, Visalia (Calif.) Times-Delta)
VISALIA, Calif. — As drenching rains moving Saturday across Northern California, this city about 230 miles to the southwest was preparing for possible flooding next week.
The city is offering free empty sandbags and piles of sand so residents can make their own barriers against flooding. A series of potent storms are expected late Monday or early Tuesday that could drop rain and snow through early Friday, said meteorologist Scott Borgioli of WeatherAg.com, a Visalia-based forecasting service for the agricultural industry.
On Saturday south of the San Francisco Bay Area, television crews turned out to record the sight — uncommon lately — of authorities in Contra Costa and San Mateo counties opening sandbag stations to help residents guard against local flooding.
Across Northern California, the National Weather Service was predicting 1 to 3 inches of rain in low-lying regions and up to 5 inches in the Sierra Nevada.
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Storms that began overnight brought between three-quarters of an inch of rain in San Jose to more than 3 inches to the north in Napa. But forecasters stressed that one rainy weekend would barely move the needle on California's three-year drought.
No major flooding was immediately reported.
At Donner Pass in the Sierra Nevada, manager Jake Sullivan at the Union 76 service station was watching the couple of inches of snow that fell overnight as it melted, and thinking positive thoughts about more snow to come. In all, up to a foot of snow was expected to fall on high Sierra elevations before the weekend ends, a welcome prospect after a dry winter last year all but killed the winter ski season for many communities.
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"This has been a good one," Sullivan said of the weekend storm. "You have to be an optimist up here. Everyone here thrives on snow."
Donner Summit saw about a foot of snow, and Lake Tahoe-area ski resorts received 3 to 4 inches.
The mountain snowpack is not only important for skiers but also because the snow acts as a reservoir, holding water for both California and Nevada that will be used in next spring and summer.
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The weather service warned of dangerous rip currents and heavy fog in coastal Southern California.
In October, California marked what the National Climactic Data Center said was the state's driest three years on record. Even with rain storms earlier this month, state reservoirs remain far lower than normal. Shasta Lake, the largest reservoir, stands at 39% of average, and Lake Oroville, the second-largest, at 42%, according to the state Department of Water Resources.
Scores of California communities have instituted mandatory or voluntary conservation.
"We're so far into a deficit, it's not going to end the drought," Diana Henderson, a forecaster with the weather service's San Francisco Bay Area office, said Saturday. California is just starting its yearly rainy season, by the end of it, one rainy weekend like this one "really won't have a huge effect on the drought."
Contributing: David Jacobs, Reno (Nev.) Gazette-Journal; The Associated Press
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