Heaviest Rain in 5 Years Brings Relief, Mudslide : Weather: Pacific Coast Highway is closed and accidents abound. But it may be only a brief respite from the drought.

The heaviest rainstorm in Ventura County in five years closed Pacific Coast Highway, flooded roadways, caused dozens of accidents, drenched parched farmland and snapped a seven-week dry spell Wednesday.

The storm is expected to dump three to six inches countywide by this morning, more than double the total precipitation since the rain year began Oct. 1. As of 9 p.m. Wednesday, 2.6 inches of rain had fallen on Ventura and 1.5 inches in Simi Valley.

A mudslide forced the California Highway Patrol to close down Pacific Coast Highway from the Los Angeles County line to Point Mugu at 9:15 p.m., authorities said.

“It’s not safe for cars to drive,” a CHP dispatcher said. Authorities said they had no information on whether people had been injured in the mudslide. Slick roads and mist contributed to more than 50 automobile accidents in the county by 8:30 p.m., according to the California Highway Patrol and other police agencies. None involved serious injuries, a patrol spokesman said.

Terry Schaeffer, an agricultural meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Santa Paula, said showers will continue intermittently through tonight, when a second storm is expected to roll in and drop more rain through the middle of Friday. Another storm may hit the county early next week.

“It’s a great storm, a bunch of systems mushed all together,” Schaeffer said.

Water supply officials were cautious in assessing the rain’s effect on the drought, saying it would do little to replenish reservoirs and ground-water basins that have sunk to record depths.

“We’ll probably have to wait until next winter before the drought is broken, even if we do get a number of storms in here,” Schaeffer said. “It’s too late to break the drought this year.”

About 35% of the county’s rainfall comes in January and February, but no rain had fallen since Jan. 10. Not since 1900 has there been a seven-week period without rain during the first two months of the year, said Dolores Taylor, senior hydrologist with the Ventura County Flood Control District.

The downpour should spare farmers, who face water rationing, from having to irrigate for several weeks. Taylor said two inches of rainfall is worth a $100-per-acre savings for growers.

At Leavens Fairview Ranch in Moorpark, manager Charles Schwabauer said he almost did a rain dance as big droplets dotted the ground about 10 a.m.

“We’ve worn all the leather off our shoes trying to get it here,” Schwabauer said. “We are elated.”

In the Santa Clara Valley, ranch manager Mike Mobley said he did not see water running off, as it would normally do in winter.

“The ground is so dry it’s really taking it in,” said Mobley, who manages about 450 acres of farms in Moorpark and the Santa Clara Valley.

“It’s certainly a long way to relieving the drought, but we’ll take anything we can get,” Mobley said. “If there aren’t more storms behind it, a month from now we’ll be back to irrigating.”

Schoolchildren did dance in the rain. At San Cayetano Elementary School in Fillmore, second- and third-graders, who were trapped indoors during their lunch break, burst from the building at day’s end, spinning with arms extended to catch raindrops.

“These kids were 3 years old the last time there was a good rain season,” said teacher Chris Villegas.

“We don’t get rain often so this kind of helps us,” said Ryan Hart, 8. “If only we could put buckets out and collect the water.”

Officials of the United Water Conservation District said the rain may be enough to allow release of more than half the water stored in the Piru Reservoir to replenish the water basins in the Oxnard Plain.

Fred Gientke, the district’s general manager, said the discharge of 15,000 acre-feet of water, intended to saturate depleted aquifers, has been postponed since November. District officials, who have not released water from the reservoir in five years, feared that the dry Santa Clara riverbed would absorb the water before it reached its destination.

“We’d still need four to six inches of rain to see a change in the surface conditions,” Gientke said. “We’d need several dozen inches of rainfall and more to have a positive impact on ground-water basins.”

Taylor said the rainfall was the heaviest since Valentine’s Day, 1986, when 2.84 inches fell in Ventura. The last major rainfall in the county was on Feb. 17, 1990, when slightly more than an inch fell at the County Government Center in Ventura and three inches fell in the mountains north of Ojai.

Taylor said that although the storm may cause widespread street flooding, the county’s rivers and streams should rise no more than 35% of capacity at the height of the runoff.

Several independent truck drivers hoping to pick up loads of produce Wednesday said they plan on being sidelined in Ventura County for several more days because little harvesting will be done until the rain stops.

Elijah McDonald, 31, of Mississippi left a Ventura truck stop to get a motel room after he failed to find a load of avocados to transport to Georgia and Florida.

“I drive in rain a lot worse than this, but you all in California, I guess this is something big,” McDonald said.

The rain did not deter Juan Arrendondo from joining a crew of five farm workers who wore yellow ponchos as they unearthed radishes in a Santa Paula field near California 126.

“It’s hard picking now, but the produce is fresher and cleaner when it gets to market,” said Arrendondo, 35.

The weather did not inconvenience crossing guard Mary Williamson, who halted traffic with her hand-held stop sign for Fillmore schoolchildren who splashed across the gushing streets.

“I don’t mind it, and the kids seem to love it,” Williamson said. “We need it desperately.”

Times staff writer Psyche Pascual contributed to this story.

COUNTY RAINFALL

Average rainfall recorded at 19 Ventura County Flood Control rain gauges this year, in inches:

Nov. 20: .41

Nov. 26: .04

Dec. 12: .01

Dec. 13: .03

Jan. 3: .06

Jan. 4: .68

Jan. 5: .31

Jan. 9: .05

Jan. 10: .22

Feb. 27: 2.50