Another winter-like storm moving into Bay Area slower than anticipated
The latest cold-weather storm of the winter — err, spring — is likely to take a bit more time to arrive in the East Bay, South Bay and Peninsula than the National Weather Service originally anticipated. So it is that rain may begin to fall just as the Saturday morning coffee begins to brew.
“The pace of the storm really appears that it’s going to get to the central part of the region right at sunrise, maybe a little bit after,” NWS meteorologist Dalton Behringer said Friday morning. “It’ll start overnight in the North Bay.”
Originally, the latest storm in what has seemed to be an unending string of them — save for rare breaks of a week to 10 days — was expected to hit the North Bay by Friday night. When it does arrive, it will bring with it cold temperatures and 25-35 mph wind gusts.
It also is expected to dump at least an inch of rain everywhere in the region, and perhaps as much as 1½ inches in areas of Alameda, Contra Costa, Santa Clara and San Mateo counties. In the North Bay, near Santa Rosa and Napa, the “steady, ongoing rainfall” is likely to drop a minimum of 1½ inches, Behringer said.
If even 1 1/4 inches falls in Santa Rosa, that would match the normal annual average that city gets for the entire month of May. Many other cities — including San Francisco, San Jose and Concord — could surpass their monthly averages depending on how hard and long the rain falls.
It’s been raining steadily and on and off for a long time. The longest break without measurable rain in the Bay Area since the start of December was 11 days. It happened one time. Two other times, the Bay Area has been dry for nine straight days.
All of which suggests that there were six more weeks of winter this year?
“Well, the good news if you want it is that we could talk about the next weekend after this one,” Behringer said. “That’s gonna be clear with warming temperatures. We’ll see if that warm pattern holds.”
Until then, get the raincoat out of storage — if it even was put away.