You are now in California and the U.S. category.

A weak storm system brought little rain to Ventura County on Monday and Tuesday, providing a disappointing end to a typically wet month. According to the Ventura County Watershed Protection District, most communities in the county got less than one-tenth of an inch of precipitation between Monday night and Tuesday morning. The exception was in Thousand Oaks, where a Tuesday afternoon storm left the city with 0.31 inch of rainfall. “People need to realize we are always on a drought footing,” said Arne Anselm, deputy director of water resources for Ventura County Public Works.

A major storm system is forecast to slam into California from Alaska and Canada starting Wednesday night, bringing soaking rain to the Bay Area on Thursday and dumping up to seven feet of new snow to the historically dry Sierra Nevada by Saturday. But as welcome as the snow is during a very dry winter so far, it won’t be enough to return the Sierra Nevada — the source of 30 percent of California’s water supply — back to its average for the year, experts said Tuesday.

A pair of storms will swing into California this week, potentially unleashing the most significant precipitation to impact the state in over a month. As the state contends with a worsening drought, depleted snowpack and renewed fears for the water supply in the coming months, the unsettled pattern may slightly ease, but not fully wipe out, these concerns. Abnormally dry winter months have caused moderate to severe drought conditions to blossom in much of central and Southern California, according to the latest report from the U.S. Drought Monitor.