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Wet January continues in California
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SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — Still recovering from a weekend storm that caused rockslides and battered its coastline, California got hit Tuesday with more heavy rain and snow.

The National Weather Service issued flood advisories for the Sacramento region and the Central California coast. Forecaster Steve Anderson said San Francisco had received more than an inch of rain by the afternoon, when the precipitation tapered off to scattered showers.

The front was expected to bring little or no precipitation to most of the southern half of the state.

Light rain reached as far south as southern Santa Barbara County, but most of the precipitation fell from San Luis Obispo County northward, the weather service said.

“We are in an El Nino pattern that means above average rainfall, which is what we’re seeing right now,” Anderson said.

The heavy rain flooded highways and forced drivers to slow down during the morning commute. A Greyhound bus flipped onto its side in San Jose, killing two people and sending at least eight others to the hospital. The cause of the crash was under investigation.

On California’s Central coast, the search continued Tuesday for two college students in Santa Cruz who were swept off a rock and into the ocean by a wave the previous evening.

Meanwhile, parts of the Sierra Nevada saw more than 7 inches of snow.

The storm comes during a wet January that has dumped more than 5 inches of rain on San Francisco — exceeding the average of 4.5 inches for the month, Anderson said. The northern Sierra Nevada has received 63 inches of precipitation since October, while the average is 50 inches over that time period, according to weather service forecaster Jim Mathews.

A weekend storm caused rock slides in Northern California that blocked roads and created pounding surf that destroyed a section of a seawall in a San Francisco Bay Area coastal city.