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The Public Policy Institute of California's Water Expert, Jeffery Mount, says even with several inches of rain falling on Sacramento during this storm, the state's severe water deficit remains.
Mount says there's basically two years of rainfall missing in the basin. Still, this ongoing storm surge will set the stage for future storms to generate water runoff. Mount says early season storms like this wet the soil, filling up the sponge. The main problem is that the drought, coupled with climate change, has dried out the soils of Northern California — meaning that much of the rain and snow will simply disappear into the ground.
Rain is expected to continue through this afternoon. The National Weather Service says, between 1 a.m. Sunday and 1 a.m. Monday, a total of 5.44” fell in Downtown Sacramento. This beat the old record of 5.28” – a mark that was set back in 1880. “There’s definitely still a lot of rainfall moving into our area,” the National Weather Service’s Katrina Hand said Sunday afternoon. A Flood Advisory is in effect until noon on Monday, NWS says, as the rainfall continued through the early morning hours.