I just talked to my sister in Northern California...

[Archae]

She said it wouldn't stop raining, but since their house is on top of a hill, the rain isn't flooding or knocking out their power.

But just west of her there is quite a bit of flooding.

[Sanity Claws]

1. On top of a hill, her worry is mud slides.

I wish her and the rest of California the best.

[Hortensis]

9. Even more bottom and sides of hills. But yes. Then there are

concerns about roads by those who need to come down off the hilltops to get to work, school, shopping.

We used to live in CA. Here in Georgia, rains wore the old mountains down eons ago, but we chose a nice, wide top of a hill when what I really wanted was riverside.

[JohnSJ]

2. Tomorrow there will be a brief break, but after that there will be six more days of this deluge

The only silver lining is that it probably will take us out of the drought. The snow pack in the mountains is quite substantial also.

[haele]

3. For the time being, at least.

We still need five to ten more years of these types of winter to get out of the drought. Not to mention the rest of the West of the Rockies states need the same sort of weather - the glacial receding over the past century has been catastrophic to our environment.

Haele

[JohnSJ]

4. Yes

[Johnny2X2X]

5. This

And this type of rain doesn't do as much to fight drought. The ground gets saturated and the water just runs off to the sea rather than to ground water. This will help some for sure, but it's not ideal and California needs several years of above average rain fall to end the drought. The snow pack is actually more important than this monsoon. Hopefully Lake Mead rises from this though.

[haele]

6. Unfortunately, Lake Mead gets it's water from the Colorado River.

Snowpack in California does little to add water to Lake Mead, Snowpack and Rocky Mountain glacial health in Northern Colorado is what affects Lake Mead.
A good California snowpack helps California fisheries, Central Valley farming and the Sacramento River Delta, along with water provided to the Bay Area and Los Angeles.
However, a good snowpack also tends to increase our potential fire season damage as scrub grows thicker in the spring and dries out over the summer, leaving more tinder for fires in the early fall.

Haele

[Hekate]

7. This

[BSdetect]

8. We've had 22.33 inches since Dec 1 About 2/3 the yearly average in Santa Rosa, NorCal

Russian River started to overflow yesterday.

[Shanti Shanti Shanti]

10. I can't help but wonder if all these torrential rains will percolate down into fault zone cracks?

IS there such a thing as "earthquake weather"?

[mopinko]

11. i'm guessing where there's been soil subsidence

there are lots of fissures where it will be funneled underground.

[Just A Box Of Rain]

12. Here in California we do have what we call "earthquake weather," but it is hot

dry weather (as opposed to rain).

How valid the concept of "earthquake weather" is open to question, but it has entered the lexicon here in CA.

[lindysalsagal]

13. My CA daughter's forecast is 9 days of rain, low 50's. Yuck!