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El Niño-driven rainstorms can be captured for precious water resources, or they can create millions of dollars of damage to cities, businesses and homeowners. It just depends on timing.

 

When the first storms dumped several inches of rain on Southern California last week, water coursed off the driveways, parking lots and streets of Inland Empire cities like Riverside and San Bernardino and into a network of gutters, where it drained, eventually, into the Santa Ana River.

Residents and businesses in the San Diego region consumed 18 percent less water in December than the same month in 2013. But that was below the state target of 20 percent for the area, the County Water Authority reported Wednesday.

 

Despite the decline in conservation, which continues a local and statewide trend, San Diegans have reduced usage 24 percent overall since June.

El Niño, have you abandoned us?

After a super stormy stretch last week, San Diego County has warmed up and dried out. And the forecast for the coming week calls for a few spritzes locally, but that’s about it.

 

Has El Niño, the periodic phenomenon that shifts the storm track and holds promise of drought relief for parched California, left us in the lurch?

A series of storms passing over Northern California are expected to drench residents in rain and dump up to 2 feet of snow on the northern Sierra Nevada, a precious water resource the state relies on in the spring, the National Weather Service said.

 

The storms are expected to bypass Southern California, according to the weather service.

 

Starting Tuesday night, the first of the storms is expected to reach from San Mateo to Sonoma before moving farther inland toward the Sierra Nevada. The region’s forests between the coast and the mountains could see up to eight inches of rain by Monday while the mountains could get 2 feet of snow, said Karl Swanberg, a forecaster with the National Weather Service’s Sacramento office.

Much of the rain that fell on Southern California last week flowed to the Pacific Ocean, but a good amount was captured by local water agencies to help replenish the region’s local water supply.

With California entering what may be its fifth year of drought, water agencies are moving to capture and store more.

 

“That was the 19th-, 20th-century thinking: ‘Let’s get that water out of here as fast as possible,’ ” said Deborah Bloome, senior director of policy at TreePeople, a nonprofit group that is working to increase rain capture in the Los Angeles area.