@Reyn,
We had a full 24 hours of constant moderate rain here in the Sacramento area. It was wonderful! The plants on my balcony think it is Spring again and look like they might set buds for another bloom cycle.
One thing I did notice, with a digital converter box and rabbit ears, TV reception really reduces to nothing in a storm. We had a high wind storm a week ago and I lost most of the reception before removing the digital converter. This weekend all we had was overcast skies and rain, no high winds and the digital reception was again reduced to none and I had to remove the converter box connection.
The country's local news stations and emergency planning folks need to resolve this problem before they cut us off of analog reception. They'll be leaving millions of folks without a source for news updates and evacuation notifications for storm warnings and floods.