Break from rain — coming soon
The Bay Area is forecast to receive light rain, then dry weather, starting Tuesday
As Northern California endures one of its wettest winters on record, an extended break from the constant downpours is on the horizon.
Following some light rain forecast this weekend, the Bay Area is expected to receive a
much-needed stretch of dry weather beginning Tuesday, with temperatures possibly reaching the mid-60s in the latter half of the week.
“If the medium and long-range models pan out, by Tuesday morning and into next weekend, there should be four or five days of no precipitation, which I think would be welcome for most of the Bay Area,” said Matt Mehle, a forecaster with the National Weather Service.
Before the dry spell arrives, more wet stuff is expected this weekend in the Bay Area, but rainfall amounts are expected to be minuscule compared to the parade of Pineapple Express storms that have pounded the region. A storm system moving in from the north is expected to impact the Bay Area on Saturday, with a drizzle followed by light showers, according to Mark Strudley, a hydrologist with the weather service.
The brunt of the storm is expected to remain over coastal waters, and predicted rainfall amounts in most Bay Area locations are less than two-tenths of an inch, according to the weather service.
“We’ll get a little bit of rain but not much,” Strudley said.
High temperatures in the mid-50s are expected through Monday, with overnight lows ranging in the mid to upper-30s, according to the weather service. There is a slight chance that some Bay Area mountains could receive a dusting of snow.
The February storms wrecked Oroville Dam’s spillway, flooded downtown San Jose and closed Interstate 80 in the Sierra Nevada under recordbreaking blizzards. As a result, just nine of California’s 58 counties, all of them in Southern California, still have significant drought conditions, the U.S. Drought Monitor reported.
So far, the parade of atmospheric rivers has created the wettest winter ever measured in the Northern Sierra, with precipitation 229 percent of the historic average. On Thursday, eight key weather stations from Lake Tahoe to Mount Shasta measured an average of 76.2 inches of precipitation since Oct. 1. A normal year is 50 inches, and this year’s total is even running above the monster winters of 1997-98 and 1982-83.
And nearly every major city in California, meanwhile, already has exceeded its annual average rainfall for the year, including Los Angeles, San Francisco, San Jose, Oakland and Sacramento.
The state’s largest reservoirs are collectively at 122 percent of average, and dam operators at Shasta, Oroville, Folsom and other enormous lakes are releasing water at a furious pace to create space to capture more stormwater and melting snow in the weeks and months ahead to try to reduce flood risk.