What this week’s storms mean for California
By Ryan Sabalow and Phillip Reese, Sacramento Bee
While a nearly record-breaking rainy season has battered California’s dams and stretched the limits of local levees, the storms that began to hit Sacramento on Tuesday aren’t expected to put much additional strain on the state’s flood-control system.
Spanning into next week, the storms are expected to drop as much as two inches of rain in Sacramento and two feet of snow in the higher elevations of the Sierra Nevada. But federal weather forecasters said Tuesday they aren’t too worried about widespread problems.
“These series of storms are definitely wet, but they’re not what we saw in January and February, by any means,” said Michelle Mead with the National Weather Service in Sacramento. “They’re more typical of our winter-into-spring storms, meaning we’re getting into that shower and thunderstorm season.”
