Drought-weary California braces for El Niño storms

san francisco» After all the talk, El Niño storms finally have lined up over the Pacific and started soaking drought-parched California with rain expected to last for most of the next two weeks, forecasters said Monday.

As much as 15 inches of rain could fall in the next 16 days in northern California, with about 2 feet of snow expected in the highest points of the Sierra Nevada, said Johnny Powell, a forecaster with the National Weather Service.

To the south, persistent wet conditions could put some Los Angeles County communities at risk of flash-flooding along with mud and debris flows, especially in wildfire burn areas.

The brewing El Niño system — a warming in the Pacific Ocean that alters weather worldwide — is expected to impact California and the rest of the nation in the coming weeks and months.

Its effects on California’s drought are difficult to predict, but Jet Propulsion Laboratory climatologist Bill Patzert said it should bring at least some relief.

Doug Carlson, spokesman for the California Department of Water Resources, pointed out that four years of drought have left California with a water deficit that is too large for one El Niño year to totally overcome.

Come April 1 — when the snowpack is typically at its deepest — water managers will be better able to gauge the situation.

“Mother Nature has a way of surprising or disappointing us,” Carlson said.

The record drought in California has forced Gov. Jerry Brown to order cities to conserve water by 25 percent, compared with the same period in 2013.

In recent weeks, a weather pattern partly linked with El Niño has turned winter upside-down across the nation, bringing springlike warmth to the Northeast, a risk of tornadoes in the South, and so much snow across the West that even ski slopes have been overwhelmed.

Big parts of the country are basking in above-average temperatures, especially east of the Mississippi River and across the Northern Plains.