From Rain to Shine : Weather: Blustery storm moves out of the area and a warm spell is expected in its wake.

Orange County will go from one extreme to the other starting today, with a gradual warming trend through the weekend that could peak with temperatures in the 90s on Tuesday.

“It’s going to be cranking up each day,” said Curtis Brack, a meteorologist for WeatherData, which provides forecasts for The Times.

The warm spell will give Orange County a chance to dry out from the second wave of a blustery storm that caused havoc on freeways Thursday morning.

“The freeways were bad,” said California Highway Patrol Officer Angel Johnson. “We had to hold our graveyard shift an extra hour and a half until 7 a.m. Everybody was crashing.”

Although some people were seriously injured in crashes, no one was killed, she said.

“The rain came down hard in the morning,” said Tim O’Toole, a CHP spokesman in Westminster. “But the thing that saved us, was that it came down in bursts. We had just a lot of little spin-outs on the roadway.”

The storm was concentrated over central and northern portions of the county. The cities of Anaheim and Garden Grove received the most rainfall, 1.77 and 1.57 inches respectively. The rest of the county received a quarter to three quarters of an inch, a county Environmental Management Agency spokesman said.

“From a water supply perspective, it continues to be good news,” said James Van Haun, a spokesman for the Orange County Water District, which serves 2 million residents.

Caltrans crews were kept busy handling about half a dozen road and lane closures, including Pacific Coast Highway between Golden West Street and Warner Avenue in Huntington Beach and a brief closure of Ortega Highway when San Juan Creek spilled over the roadway two miles east of Interstate 5. Most roadways were reopened by Thursday afternoon.

The heavy rainfall also forced the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, which operates Prado Dam in Riverside County, to release millions of gallons of water downstream on Thursday after the level of the dam nearly reached a legal maximum.

Prado’s maximum is set at 505 feet because of the Endangered Species Act, which calls for protection of the habitat of the least Bell’s vireo, an endangered songbird.

“We are not allowed to go beyond that,” said Billy Thomas, U.S. Army Corps of Engineers spokesman in Los Angeles. “But we’ve had such heavy rains during the past two months, that we have had to release water several times.”

Meanwhile, a sliding hillside threatening three homes in Corona del Mar remained stable through Thursday’s storm.

Weatherdata’s Brack said today will be breezy with high temperatures in the mid-60s. Santa Ana winds beginning Saturday will bring warmer temperatures, expected to reach 90 in some inland areas Tuesday.