A spring storm that had doused Northern California for the previous 24 hours arrived in Southern California on Tuesday night, bringing mostly light but necessary rainfall across a region that has been experiencing extreme drought conditions. Thousands were without power for several hours because of the storm, and the Los Angeles Dodgers had a rare rain delay on the second day of the season, though there wasn't nearly enough moisture for a rainout. Amy Jackson, 35, of Los Angeles, a corporate securities paralegal, expressed joy as she had a cigarette in the lee of a downtown skyscraper. Much needed: Gilbert Jaffe, a retired Satellite Engineer at Lockheed Martin, collects rain water from his sidewalk into his back garden in the Echo Park district of Los Angeles Tuesday as rains moved down from Northern California . Snow, too: Susan Feist leaves her store Feist Wines as hail falls in Amador City, California on Tuesday as an unusually cold spring storm brought heavy rain and hail to parts of Northern California . 'We're absolutely thrilled to have rain,' she said. 'It's been scary, actually, as to how low our reservoirs have gotten ... so to even have this little bit, it's great.' Earlier in the day, the unusually cold spring storm brought heavy rain and hail to parts of Northern California and coated the mountains in snow - a welcome respite but one that will do little to ease the historic drought, forecasters say. The storm brought enough snow to the Sierra near Lake Tahoe to produce near white-out conditions on roadways and a string of traffic accidents that caused the California Highway Patrol to order motorists off a 15 mile-stretch of a major highway on Tuesday afternoon. In the Sierra, up to 6 inches of snow was expected above 7,000 feet, with 2 to 4 inches expected to accumulate as low as 3,000 feet before the system clears out Wednesday. Moving on: A man rides his bicycle around a flooded section of roadway as demolition continues in the background at Candlestick Park Tuesday, April 7, 2015, in San Francisco . Motorists on the CA-101 freeway face rainy weather in Los Angeles on Tuesday. The storm dumped rain in parts of Santa Barbara and Ventura counties and promised three to four hours of steady rain later in the day to parts of Los Angeles County . Rainbow: A section of the California aqueduct with a rainbow in the background is pictured in Palmdale, California . More than an inch fell on some counties in the San Francisco Bay Area, where rainy weather slowed the morning commute, caused some wrecks and led to wind advisories for four bridges, officials said. In Daly City, south of San Francisco, at least one car was submerged in rainwater that was flooding Interstate 280 on-ramps. In Fremont, a tractor-trailer jack-knifed before sunrise, blocking northbound Interstate 680 for several hours. Gilbert Jaffe, a retired Boeing engineer, was scooping up buckets of the stuff during brief rains Tuesday night and carrying it into barrels in his backyard near downtown Los Angeles. 'I've been collecting water for a couple of years,' Jaffe said. 'I use the rainwater for my garden.' He said he'd been watering his tomatoes and peppers for six weeks with rain he collected during a bigger storm in February, and hoped his new take could continue his no-tap-water streak. Looming: Low clouds are pictured in La Canada Flintridge, California as rains moved south on Tueday . Downed trees: Sacramento City Urban Forestry workers Enrique Gamez, left, and Ignacio Moreno remove a tree limb that has fallen into the street after a storm swept through Sacramento . Fans wait during a rain delay prior to a baseball game between the Los Angeles Dodgers and the San Diego Padres on Tuesday in Los Angeles . Dodgers fan James Montelongo checks the radar during a rare rain delay prior to a game between the Los Angeles Dodgers and the San Diego Padres on the second day of the season . Fresno County Farmer Keith Nilmeier needs the rain for sure. Nilmeier grows 320 acres of citrus, peaches and wine grapes. The rain will force him to spray his trees with fungicide to keep fruit from rotting. But Nilmeier said it is worth the extra expense, because California needs the water. He expects the storm to drop up to half an inch, and with a little more he may have to irrigate one less time this summer. 'That's farming,' he said. 'You deal with Mother Nature on her own terms.' The rain and snowfall is a big change from last week, when Gov. Jerry Brown, attending the last snowpack survey of the season, stood in dry, brown grass at a site normally covered in snow this time of year and announced he had ordered cities and towns to cut the state's overall water usage by 25 percent compared with 2013 levels. The snowpack makes its way into rivers and streams and provides 30 percent of the state's water. Sign of the times: A sign along Interstate 5 reading 'Stop the Congress Created DUST BOWL' is pictured in the Central Valley of California. California governor Jerry Brown ordered the state's first-ever mandatory water cuts on 01 April, in the fourth year of a devastating drought that has dried up wells, forced mandatory rationing and jeopardized crops in one of the largest agricultural producing regions in the world . A sign along Interstate 5 reading 'No Water = No Jobs' and criticizing politicians for California's water problems is pictured in the Central Valley of California .
Northern California got a day of much needed rains this week but the storm will do little to remedy the historic drought .