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October Storms Gets Rainy Season Off To Fast Start

SAN FRANCISCO (CBS SF) – Mother Nature smiled upon drought-parched Northern California with a series of late October storms that dumped several inches of much needed rain across the region.

As the month slipped away on Halloween night, trick-or-treaters in the San Francisco Bay Area scurried from house-to-house as rain fell from the sky.

The Santa Cruz area got nearly an inch of rain in some neighborhoods before the final storm of the month moved through early Tuesday morning.

In the Santa Cruz Mountains, where the Loma wildfire roared through tinder-dry underbrush at the start of the month, the storms dumped as much as a foot of rain.

The National Weather Service said for the month it was the wettest October since 2009.

Santa Rosa got 7.38 inches of rain during the month – 299 percent of the normally expected level of precipitation for October.

San Francisco had 2.46 inches – 177 percent of normal. Oakland Airport finished with 2.75 inches – 237 percent of the normal. Livermore got 3.26 inches or 283 percent of normal and Monterey received 2.72 inches of rain or 302 percent of normal.

Runoff from the storms had nearly filled Marin County's vital Lagunitas Reservoir – the highest levels this early in the season that water managers can remember.

But while optimistic, Lon Peterson of the Marin Municipal Water District, says he also remains cautious.

"We are not out of the woods yet," he told KPIX 5. "We are still in October and there's a lot of the (wet) season to go. The other reservoirs are not full so conservation should be still at the top of mind."

In the Sierra, the storms have also helped the drought conditions. At Blue Canyon, a spot favored by news crews for live shots on snowy afternoons on nearby Highway 80, the storms have dumped 16.71 inches of rain or 317 percent of normal.

The Central Sierra Snow Lab in Truckee, meanwhile, received 11.23 inches of precipitation in October – one of the highest totals since it got 16.03 by the end of October 1963.

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