Soaking rainstorm forecast for West Coast through weekend

Traffic moves slowly across the Golden Gate Bridge in the high winds and rain on Dec. 11, 2014, in this view from Sausalito, Calif.(Photo: Eric Risberg, AP)California's feast-or-famine winter — which included a soggy December followed by a record dry January — continues this week, with several days of rain expected starting Thursday.The heaviest rain is likely in Northern California, western Oregon and western Washington, where some areas could get more than 10 inches through Monday, the National Weather Service predicts.San Francisco will see its first rainfall since late December, with 1 to 3 inches forecast in the immediate bay area through the weekend. For the most part, the rain is welcome in California because of a relentless drought that has left 98% of the state parched.Several cities in Northern California, including San Francisco, San Jose and Sacramento, had their driest January on record. San Francisco had no rain at all, the first time that's happened since records began in the 1850s.But too much rain, too fast isn't necessarily ideal, either."Given the hefty amounts of rainfall that are in the forecast, this brings up the potential for multiple impacts, including landslides, debris flows, sharp rises on streams and rivers and urban flooding," said Weather Channel meteorologist Chris Dolce.Flood watches have been posted along the coast from northwest California to southwest Oregon."There will be flooding. There will be mudslides. It's only a matter of where and how bad," said AccuWeather western weather expert Ken Clark.Snow will fall in the mountains, including the Cascades of Washington and Oregon and the northern Sierra Nevada in California."Snow levels, because of the warm subtropical flow, will be very high — above 8,000 feet most of the time," Clark said, adding the storms won't add much to the light snowpack throughout much of the West.The rain and snow will be delivered courtesy of an "atmospheric river," a conveyor belt of moisture from the tropics that fuels most of the heavy rain events in Northern California.Another threat from the storm is strong winds in excess of 55 mph, with locally higher wind gusts up to 75 mph possible near the coast and the coastal mountains, the weather service said.Meanwhile, Southern California — including Los Angeles and San Diego as well as the mountains to the east of the cities — is not forecast to see any rain or snow from this round of storms.While the wet weather pattern to the north will put a small dent in the drought, even if it continued for a couple months it would not eliminate the deficit of rain that has built up, according to Brian Fuchs, a climatologist with the National Drought Mitigation Center.Dramatic video shows plane clip bridge before crashFeb 04, 2015