About 40 stranded drivers and city employees in San Jacinto Valley spent the day digging their cars out of mud and cleaning up after floods swallowed up their neighborhoods, according to The Associated Press.
The storm brought some relief to the parched state, but a new analysis showed how much more rain and snow is needed to pull it from its historic drought. More than 99 percent of California remained in moderate or worse drought despite rains received through the end of November, national drought experts said.
The update shows that California's drought status was unchanged from the previous week, meaning 55 percent of the state still is considered in the most extreme category of drought, while 99.7 percent remains in moderate drought or worse, USA Today reported.
The rain in recent days was among the heaviest that some areas had seen in years. Climatologists have said that California needs to see a consistent pattern of storms to move beyond its driest three years on record.
The storm dropped varying amounts of rain, from 14.5 inches at Yucaipa Ridge in the San Bernardino Mountains to 4.3 inches in San Francisco, while 1.5 inches fell on downtown Los Angeles, according to the National Weather Service.
The San Francisco Bay Area passed normal annual rainfall totals for the first time in years.
In Los Angeles, slightly above normal rainfall accumulated during the season, and since July 1, it has recorded 2.30 inches of rain compared with the normal average of 2.14 inches by Dec. 4, the AP reported.
