Storm soaks region, but drought's grip still tight

So much rain has fallen in the Santa Cruz Mountains that Terri Hunsinger captured 12,000 gallons on her metal roof to use for drinking, cleaning and household chores. Yet her family still only takes showers, not baths, to conserve. "I have gotten used to that," she says. Parts of the Bay Area have gotten almost as much rain in the past two days as fell all of last year. Recent storms put us well above our normal rainfall average. And yes we're still in a drought.

The simple explanation behind that frustrating fact is this: Most of the water causing mudslides, downing trees and snarling traffic will not flow into our faucets. The Wednesday morning commute was a headache, although the California Highway Patrol reported fewer crashes than the previous morning. Standing water in roadways was a hazard, especially on heavily traveled Mission Boulevard in Fremont, where police closed the northbound lanes at 8 a.m. There's another big problem: These storms are too warm.

To be truly useful, rain needs to turn into snow when it hits the Sierra -- because that's where next summer's water is stored. Snowpack is only 20 percent of normal. By comparison, rainfall here in the Bay Area is between 121 percent and 165 percent normal. "It needs to be snow that acts as a bank that we can draw upon, in the spring," said National Weather Service meteorologist Steve Anderson.Over the past five days, San Jose has had 3.68 inches of rain; Oakland, 3.62 inches; Concord, 2.65 inches; San Francisco, 4.33 inches and Ben Lomond, a stunning 10.12 inches. Thursday is expected to be mostly cloudy, with a chance of showers.

Showers also are likely Friday. The people who benefit most from the rain are folks like Hunsinger, who has filled five large rain barrels by capturing every drop that falls on her Los Gatos roof. "We can now do laundry at home instead of laundromat, flush toilets after peeing and take more than a 3-minute shower," she said. "Rain washes our cars and waters our plants. There's no more fire fear. "Life is more relaxed, water-wise, which is a big thing," she said. "Thank God for rain." But residents who rely on wells say they've seen no improvement at all.

At Letha Welch's home, where a once-bountiful well no longer sustains a family of five, "we still ran short of rain to refill the aquifer." People with even deeper wells will have to wait longer. In the rural Central Valley town of Alpaugh, "our wells are so deep -- 1,320 and 1,100 feet -- that water is going to percolate into them very slowly," said John Burchard, who manages the town's water supply. "It will take some time." Urban water systems for Bay Area cities rely on reservoirs and snow -- and for them, it's as if no rain fell at all.