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The first major El Niño storm of the season arrived at this small Ventura County beach town Tuesday morning, and it didn’t take long for that potent combination of fire and rain to cause problems.

 

An intense downpour hammered a stretch of Highway 101 where a brush fire had swept through on Christmas weekend. Debris from the fire quickly clogged two drains in the freeway median. Soon, 6 inches of rain had accumulated on the roadway, bringing traffic to a halt.

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers’ Los Angeles office activated its Reservoir Operations Center on Tuesday to help reduce flooding risk during the winter storms.

 

Van Crisostomo, chief of the operations center, said late Tuesday morning that rainfall had “not really affected our areas of operation, but we will continue to monitor in the event that changes.”

 

The center’s staff tracks real-time information about water levels at dams operated by the Army Corps so that they can modulate the release of water through dams based on weather conditions, Corps officials said.

As long-awaited rain comes to the state, regulators said Tuesday that California cut its water usage by 20.3% in November, staying on track to meet the target set by Gov. Jerry Brown.

 

The savings percentage, compared with November 2013, was the lowest in six months of reporting and moved California’s cumulative savings to 26.3% from 27.1% in October. The November savings is still slightly above the 25% cutback that Brown called for.

If the weather so far this week is any indicator of what El Niño can bring to San Diego County and the rest of California, then people should be ready for a prolonged mix of relief and misery.

 

Relief because the extra rainfall and snow would go a long way toward ending the state’s drought, which has lasted four consecutive years.

To understand the power and potential dangers of El Niño, look at satellite images of the Pacific Ocean on Sunday.

 

At least four storms were brewing — the farthest still getting going in Asia — and all aimed at California.

 

It’s this pattern, a series of back-to-back-to-back storms seemingly arriving on a conveyor belt, that concerns officials bracing for potential damage from the predicted winter of heavy rains.

 

“El Niño storms: it’s steady, not spectacular. But it’s relentless,” said Bill Patzert, climatologist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in La Cañada Flintridge. “It’s not 10 inches in 24 hours and nothing afterward.