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Forecast says storm will pack little rain
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More from County NewsAn unseasonably cold storm moving south from Canada was expected to bring measurable rain to Ventura County today for the first time in more than four months.
But after less than 48 hours of wintry weather, the county is in for another string of dry days, forecasters said.
Meteorologists predicted as much as an inch of rain would fall on Ventura County coastal areas as the storm intensifies tonight and then moves out on Saturday. Foothill areas might get up to 3 inches from the storm, which could also bring thunder to the region.
Temperatures around the county were expected to drop into the low 50s during the storm, Bill Hoffer, a spokesman for the National Weather Service office in Oxnard, said Thursday.
"It's like a December-type storm in September," said Scott Holder, storm operations hydrologist for the Ventura County Watershed Protection District.
Like many of the weather systems last winter, the storm looked like it might fall short of expectations, Holder said Thursday. But even if it produces mostly showers, pockets of thunderstorms and hard rain could cause debris flows and mudslides in areas recently burned by wildfires. Otherwise, the storm should not cause more than some street flooding on the Oxnard Plain, he said.
Pockets of hard rain could lead to slides in areas of Los Padres National Forest burned by the Zaca fire, agreed Elissa Lynn, senior meteorologist at the California Department of Water Resources in Sacramento.
After the storm moves out of the county Saturday, drought conditions are expected to continue through at least December, Lynn said. La Niña conditions predicted by National Weather Service scientists this month are expected to contribute to drier than normal weather in Southern California, she said.
While any rain would be helpful during this dry time of year, the storm isn't likely to do any lasting good for the local watershed, Holder said.
"This storm by no means is going to end the fire season or end the record dry year for Ventura County," he said.
Posted by Freedom1 on September 21, 2007 at 7:16 p.m. (Suggest removal)
Well it looks like the forecasters are wrong once again. I don't know where they live but it's been raining in Camarillo and Simi Valley most of the afternoon!
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