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© Jeff Chiu/APA woman carries an umbrella as she crosses the street with lanterns in Chinatown, San Francisco.
Rain prompted fire officials to lift ban on outdoor open burning in parts of state, but they warned of continued risk of wildfires

A series of storms has drenched California and even heavier rains are expected this weekend, promising a fleeting respite from the state's devastating drought.

Bay area mountains were expected to receive 152mm (six inches) of rain and the northern sierras two feet of snow, a welcome deluge after the driest winter on record.

A ridge of high pressure that has hovered over the west coast for months, blocking normal weather patterns, eased and allowed a weather system to break through, dumping rain across swathes of California on Thursday and Friday. Bigger weather systems were expected to follow in the next few days, bringing even heavier rain.

"Current satellite imagery depicts the early stages of what promises to be a significant precipitation event over the weekend," said the California Weather blog. "'Heavy' and 'rain' are not words that have been used in the same sentence for a long time here in California."

Areas with 20% normal rain levels since last July, the start of the season, could see that jump to 40% by Monday, said Jan Null, a meteorologist with the Golden Gate Weather Services. "It's a lot, but there is such a big deficit to make up. What we need - and I don't know if we'll get it - is half a dozen such weekends like the one we're going to get."

The rain prompted fire officials to lift a ban on outdoor open burning in parts of northern and central California, but they warned of continued risk of unseasonal wildfires.

San Francisco, with 61mm (2.42in) of rain so far this season, is at 17% of normal. Santa Rosa, with 70mm (2.75in) of rainfall, is at 12%. "Winter never came this year. You try to enjoy the sunny days but you worry about the future," said Paula Ramirez, a hotel worker in Oakland.

There are no accurate forecasts more than a week ahead but Bob Benjamin, a National Weather Service forecaster in Monterey, expressed hope a more routine storm pattern would settle and bring relief to the state.

Governor Jerry Brown recently declared a state of emergency after Califorina reached its 13th month of drought, wreaking havoc on a $45bn agriculture sector which supplies much of the country's fruit, nuts, vegetables, wine and dairy products. The crisis could leave thousands of farm workers jobless and increase food prices.

"It's great that we have some rain and snow, it'll moisten the soil," said Ryan Jacobsen, executive director of the Fresno County Farm Bureau. "But respite? Very little. In terms of long-term fixes to get our farms through the summer it'll do almost nothing."

Farmers in western Fresno county are expected to leave 200,000 to 300,000 acres of land fallow for want of federal water allocations.

Jacobsen worried the rain would prompt some people to think the crisis had passed when in reality it was set to endure.

The National Weather Service tweeted a photo juxtaposing a 10oz coffee mug, representing the recent rain, beside a 5 gallon bucket, representing the lack of water since the 2011/12 winter. "Please continue to conserve water," it said.
What do a bucket and coffee cup have to do with the#CAdrought? Reality check on this weekend's storm.#cawx pic.twitter.com/AEJbnYVlQJ

- NWS Sacramento (@NWSSacramento) February 7, 2014
The federal government has designated a tenth of California as being in "exceptional drought," the severest category. Records suggest it is equal to or worse than any other short-term drought and is among the top 10 worst droughts to hit California in the past 500 years, based on tree-ring records and instrument data, according to Climate Central, part of the Guardian's Environment Network. "The drought is part of a broader Western drought that has lasted for roughly 13 years, raising the specter of a modern-day "megadrought" akin to events that doomed some ancient civilizati ons.