California wildfire evacuees prepare their tents for steady rains

Rain has been falling on the scorched ground left when wildfires tore through communities in Northern California, including the devastated town of Paradise, killing at least 83 people and destroying thousands of homes.

The rain began Wednesday in areas around the town of 27,000 people, 280 kilometres northeast of San Francisco.

Rain that is forecast through the U.S. Thanksgiving weekend could aid crews fighting wildfires while complicating efforts to recover human remains.

Forecasters say the rain is hitting slopes stripped of vegetation because of wildfires that have burned for nearly two weeks, moving across 62,000 hectares of the Sierra foothills.

While this is expected to inflict more misery on evacuees camped out in tents, hydrologist Cindy Matthews of the U.S. National Weather Service said the volcanic soil and relatively shallow slopes in the fire zone mean the ground is unlikely to become saturated enough for hillsides to give way to landslides.

The service has issued flash-flood watches for recent burn areas.

Forecasters say the rains are likely to be accompanied by winds of 72 km/h in some areas.

In a Walmart parking lot in Chico, Calif., where hundreds of evacuees had taken refuge, Amy Sheppard was packing her belongings into a black plastic garbage bag in the rain on Wednesday.

The 38-year-old woman said she plans to go to a hotel where her sister and one-year-old niece are staying after the three of them camped in the lot for four days.

The family lost their home in Magalia, 30 kilometres east of Chico.

Several dozen tents remain at the lot, although most services have been stopped. Sheppard said many of the remaining people are homeless, not victims of the fire.

Kelly Boyer, who lost his home in Paradise, has been sharing a tent with a friend in the same Walmart parking lot, where overnight low temperatures have fallen to just above freezing.

Boyer has received wooden pallets and plastic tarps donated by local residents to keep his tent off the ground and dry, but he said the rain would still make a mess. "It's going to be mud city," he told Reuters.