This weekend's winter storm dumped much-welcome rain and snow in the Valley and Sierra but also took the life of a Yosemite National Park employee early Saturday.

Ryan Hiller, 27, of Chapel Hill, N.C., was in a tent cabin at the Yosemite Valley stable complex near Curry Village when high winds knocked a huge tree branch onto the tent about 6:30 a.m. Saturday, Yosemite spokesman Scott Gediman said. Hiller was killed instantly, Gediman said.

Hiller was working at the park as a concessionaire and had been a park ranger for several seasons. He was living in the tent cabin while waiting for ski season.

"He was a wonderful park ranger," Gediman said. "We are tremendously upset about what happened."

Gediman said Hiller was a "very skilled ranger" who often helped in search-and-rescue efforts.

The rainstorm, which came after a two-month dry spell in the Valley, set a record Saturday for Fresno for the most rainfall on Jan. 21, the National Weather Service in Hanford reported.

The .63 of an inch of rain that fell in Fresno from midnight to 4 a.m. Saturday topped the record for Jan. 21 of .52 of an inch set in 2010, said the National Weather Service.

That was part of nearly 1 inch of rain that dropped on Fresno during a 24-hour period ending at 10 a.m. Saturday.

The last measurable rain in Fresno was .30 of an inch on Nov. 20.

Raindrops weren't the only precipitation hitting the Valley. Some Clovis police officers saw hail falling Saturday, said Janet Stoll-Lee, spokeswoman for the Clovis Police Department.

"One of my captains said he had to pull over near Willow and Nees because it was coming down so hard," Stoll-Lee said. "Another one of my traffic controllers said that there was hail at his house falling down hard."

Stoll-Lee said there were no reports of hail damage.

Snow fell near the 8,000-foot level with Tuolumne Meadows reporting 12 inches of snow. Isolated showers in the Valley are possible today before the next storm is expected to arrive this afternoon and linger into Monday.