Forecasters on Monday issued a winter storm watch for the northern Sierra Nevada and western Plumas County.
The National Weather Service alert for areas above 5,500 feet was set for Tuesday afternoon through Thursday morning. As much as 2 feet of snow was expected.
The heaviest snowfall is expected Wednesday, with accumulations of 1 to 2 feet of snow above 6,000 feet before the storm system moved out.
In Northern Nevada, the storm was forecast to bring a chance of rain and snow Wednesday. The storm was expected to bring strong winds today with lower temperatures. The high for Wednesday was expected to be about 50.
The system will drop rain elsewhere in California, with a half-inch to an inch expected in the San Francisco Bay Area, National Weather Service forecaster Duane Dykema said.
The storms are not expected to make a significant dent in the drought.
“We’re so late in the rainy season, by the law of averages and the way the climate works here, it would almost be impossible to make up much ground on our drought situation unless we get very anomalous precipitation between now and the end of April,” said National Weather Service forecaster Duane Dykema. “The best we can hope for is to ease some of these deficits.”