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El Niño gave Sacramento its biggest rainstorm in more than a year Tuesday, overwhelming gutters and snarling traffic but putting another small dent in the drought.

The second straight day of El Niño storms meant snow chain controls for much of the Sierra Nevada and occasional traffic accidents throughout the Sacramento region. A pre-dawn big-rig crash on southbound Highway 99 near Dillard Road forced lane closures, while a car crash later in the morning on northbound Interstate 5 near Pocket Road caused headaches for commuters. Vehicles encountered significant flooding early in the day on the Capital City Freeway, near the E Street exit. Caltrans said a jackknifed big rig near the Nevada border brought eastbound traffic on Interstate 80 to a halt for about an hour.

Paul G. Peschel has been named the Kings River Conservation District’s new general manager, agency officials announced Monday.

Peschel, the planning and engineering manager for the Imperial Irrigation District Energy Department in El Centro, will begin his new job for the Fresno-based agency on Jan. 25. He replaces David Orth.

A registered civil engineer, Peschel has a background in water resources, engineering and management. He was employed by the Imperial Irrigation District for nearly 30 years, starting as an assistant engineer for the district located in southeast California.

The kind of rainy weather pattern shaping up for Central California this week has not occurred since 2010, the National Weather Service said Saturday.

A series of storms is expected to roll into Central California and will make for the most days with rain since before the drought began.

Three separate storms are on track to hit the central San Joaquin Valley Valley, meteorologist Brian Ochs said. The total expected rainfall for the three systems in the Valley is around 1 to 1.5 inches.

The ongoing drought has driven interest in using recycled water instead of drinking-quality water wherever possible, but making that happen depends largely on where the “purple pipes” run.

Wastewater treatment agencies in the East Bay have been selling (or giving away) the water that runs through those purple pipes — essentially wastewater that has been treated to a lesser degree than water purified for drinking and other domestic purposes — for uses ranging from watering home gardens to helping cool down a power plant.

The Sacramento Bee editorial promoting construction of Sites reservoir noted that it would cost $3 billion to $4 billion (“State needs to invest in Sites reservoir”; Editorials, Dec. 27).

Proposals to build Sites have been put forth since the 1940s, and none have gotten past a drawing board. No study has ever shown that the project makes economic sense. Even Don Hodel, President Ronald Reagan’s interior secretary, said the Sites project would never pencil out.

Sites reservoir would add a little more than 1 percent to the state’s storage capacity.