Moonsoonal moisture is on its way over California this week, which will bring the possibility of some light rain, and also, more ominously, lightning in some already fire-prone areas.

Everyone here will recall the apocalyptic summer of 2020, when lightning-sparked wildfires consumed huge swaths of our region — all of which began during a mid-August spate of monsoonal moisture coming from the south. The weekend saw some early monsoon-season rain in Arizona — which the whole Southwest desperately needs, as their drought conditions are even worse than ours in some spots. But that moisture moving up over the California coast brings the potential for dry thunderstorms, and only a little bit of potential for actual precipitation for the Bay Area.

The National Weather Service is warning of possible lightning-ignited fires between Wednesday and Thursday, and they say that the Bay Area and Central Coast are the areas of greatest concern.

Periods of monsoonal moisture came our way in August and September of 2021 without any major lightning incidents, but the memories of two years ago are still pretty fresh.

And it seems like not that long ago, lightning was an exceedingly rare occurrence around the Bay, but starting around 2017 we've seen a few more summertime lightning storms, including this one in September 2017 where a photographer captured lightning striking Salesforce Tower.

Meteorologist Daniel Swain says the wetter areas for this weather system are likely to be in the Southern California mountains, and dry thunderstorms are likelier in the Central Valley and closer to us.

Sarah McCorkle, a National Weather Service meteorologist, tells the Chronicle, "The Bay Area itself won’t get a whole lot from this," but parts of the East Bay and North Bay could see a bit of moisture starting late Wednesday. And lightning tends to be fairly difficult to predict.

Meanwhile, San Francisco is having a heatwave day, with temperatures expected to hit highs in the 80s today. But this is forecast to be the last super warm day in the city this week, with the rest of this week seeing part sun and average temps around 65 degrees.

Photo: Johannes Plenio

As if this weekend's unusual — exceedingly, hellaciously  — hot summer temperatures weren’t enough, Bay Area locals were treated to a rare lightning show last night and early this morning as wild thunderstorms roared through much of the region.

Suffice to say it's been a weekend filled with atmospheric anomalies. We've seen record-high temperatures (that spurred rolling blackouts); strong gusts of wind swept through various parts of the East Bay; a literal fire tornado, birthed by the Loyalton Fire, was recorded in Lassen County and made media headlines across the country. And now we can add severe thunderstorms to that previous list of descriptors.

As reported by the Chronicle, this round of hot weather triggered an unusual series of summer thunderstorms Sunday evening that created wind gusts of 75 mph and sparked a few small brush fires. Though those blazes were mostly subjected to areas north, south, and east of San Francisco — some grasslands along Point Reyes caught flame; the East Bay saw a handful of brush fires (including a 50-plus acre inferno in Livermore), as did parts of the Santa Cruz Mountain range — lightning lit up skies across our slice of Northern California.

And with warm, sweltering temperatures expected well into next week, there's a chance another round of thunderstorms might be on the horizon.

Pontifications aside, scroll through some of our favorites snaps (and a few videos) of last night's local lighting shows.

San Francisco

*Photo in the above tweet by Raman Frewy was taken by Stuart Berman

East Bay

North Bay

South Bay

Related: One More Photo: Lightning Strikes Salesforce Tower [2017]

First Rolling Blackouts in Almost Two Decades Affect 220,000 PG&E Customers

Image: Joseph Guillory (taken from Glen Park)

Last night's rare — and lengthy — thunderstorm around the Bay Area caused upwards of 7,000 flashes in the sky and 1,200 ground strikes according to meteorologists, and everyone should be braced for a second round today as conditions that make these things possible remain.

Monday's storm caused several wildfires down in Santa Clara County, where one fire caused by a lightning strike is still spreading near Wunderlich County Park in Woodside as of Tuesday morning. As CBS 5 reports, crews down there were battling multiple vegetation fires caused by lightning starting around 7 p.m. Monday.

No structures are imminently threatened, and it's unclear how much acreage the fire has covered.

At SFO Monday night, a worker driving a vehicle that tows planes was struck by lightning according to a manager there, speaking to KRON 4. They say the worker was not seriously injured and was not hospitalized as a result of the lightning strike.

So far no other reports of people being struck during last night's storm have come in.

A low pressure system lingering over the ocean, which has replaced the high pressure that had kept us so warm over the last week, is what's causing these thunder-prone conditions, and another wave of pyrotechnics could be expected tonight over parts of the Bay Area.

As the Chronicle reports, temperatures are expected to drop again this evening, and then things will warm up again before the weekend after the storms pass.

Below, one more dramatic shot from Rincon Hill, taken by SFist contributor E. Chang.

It's weird enough that we're getting a thunderstorm tonight, but this was one with an unusually high number of cloud-to-ground lightning strikes. Also, meteorologists are saying that more thunderstorms are possible on Tuesday, so your freaked out pets shall continue the freaking out.

We've discussed before why thunderstorms are relatively rare for San Francisco, but it's been a weird year! This storm came with pea-sized hail, and as SFGate reports, via the National Weather Service, the Bay Area saw over 1200 lightning strikes between noon and late evening, at which point the thunder was calming down in SF.

The Giants' game against the Dodgers was delayed because of the storm, and there were some dramatic shots of lightning over AT&T Park.

Also, obviously, Twitter was ablaze with video and photos of the lightning, some of which you can see below. Have a great shot? Send it to us at tips@sfist.com.

This post has been updated throughout.

The current Bay Area heat wave might have an unusual interruption this evening, when forecasters say thunderstorms might strike San Francisco and the South Bay.

Will Pi, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service tells the Chron that after days of sweltering temperatures, a"cooldown is expected to sweep into the Bay Area starting on Thursday."

And with that cooldown comes possible stormy weather, NBC Bay Area reports, as "an area of monsoonal moisture will move into the southern portion of the Bay Area."

With that area could come "thunderstorms and dry lightning strikes" as well as "above-average humidity."

As we discussed a couple years ago, thunderstorms are rare in the area as the geography of our part of the West Coast tends to get much of our weather via cold fronts coming in off the Pacific, while thunderstorms tend to ride along warm fronts and require heat and humidity. So the current warm wetness might be the perfect recipe for a couple Bay Area booms.

The storms, should they arrive, as expected late Thursday evening. Until then, NBC says SF can expect a high temperature of around 75 today. Those temps will, the Chron reports, "stay relatively the same through Friday before cooling down for the weekend."

Related: Weather Report: Thunder!

Thunderstorms headed toward #SF. Heavy rain...#lightning & small hail possible. #cawx pic.twitter.com/mtNLKcG4MW

— NWSBayArea (@NWSBayArea) November 9, 2015

No, that wasn't the garbage truck rumbling outside your window this morning: Thunder and lightning, those rare San Francisco beasts, were rumbling and striking this morning, as the winter storm season officially kicks into gear.

The storm hit San Francisco in earnest by around 7 a.m. Monday, with a decent amount of rain, flashes of lightning, and rumblings of thunder.

And with the rain comes slick roads, with "dozens of minor crashes" on Bay Area highways by 8:30 a.m., according to a California Highway Patrol dispatcher. As Captain Christopher Sherry, Commander of California Highway Patrol, San Francisco, says, everyone just needs to slow down.

The National Weather Service says that hazardous weather is expected throughout the day, with isolated showers with brief heavy downpours" expected "from the North Bay to the Santa Cruz Mountains," the Chron reports.

According to KRON4, we should expect the heaviest rain from now until 2 p.m., but even after that we're in for "a scattered shower forecast for the rest of the day with a chance of pop-up thunderstorms."

Though the rain should taper off by tonight, expect cold temperatures tomorrow and the rest of the week, with rain likely to return by next weekend.

The winter storm that brought us a smattering of rain on Sunday is going to dump a fair bit more on us tonight and into tomorrow, and it will bring with it some possible thunder and lightning in parts of the Bay Area, as well as possible hail and temperatures in the 40s.

April is traditionally a time of year when conditions align for us to get a rare thunderstorm in the Bay Area. The reason for their rarity, as we discussed last year, is that thunderstorms typically require the kind of hot and humid conditions that we rarely ever have. It's not looking to be especially warm tonight, so I'm not sure why early April always brings this possibility, but it has the past few years.

Weather Underground puts the heaviest rain and possibility of thunder after midnight for SF, and the Chronicle says that some parts of the Bay Area could see up to two inches of rainfall tonight, which will be fantastic. There is a winter storm warning in effect for the whole Bay Area through 12 a.m. Wednesday.

Unfortunately, it's not the whopper of a storm that will make any big impacts, drought-wise, and even though snow is predicted for Tahoe as a result, it will likely melt in warmer weather by the end of the week.

Sure, we saw some lightning on Saturday night. But not much. Not much at all. And we were told there would be lots of thunder and lightning during this weekend's limp storm. Instead, said powerful storm headed down south and pounded the Grapevine, resulting in a rather lovely Sunday afternoon here in San Francisco. (We walked around Union Square with iced espresso! The mind boggles.)

Anyway, once again we're promised a stormy week ahead, with light rain today and tomorrow and heavier downpours in Wednesday and Thursday. Which: bah! If we're going to get rain during our nascent springtime, we'd prefer a few dramatic thunderstorms to make it worth our while.

Crazy weather we're having, eh? We don't know about you, but we didn't leave the house today. We read there was a Double Rainbow earlier, and we experienced the thunder and lightning for ourselves. It also hailed.

Did you go outside today?

[Via SF Citizen
video: Trevor Pressman]

With Gavin caught up in a tough re-election campaign against...ummm...well...huh.... he's started playing up his street people street cred. Recently, he announced a plan to deal with all the vagrants caught doing vagrant-like by sending out "Homeless Outreach Teams" to deal with it. The teams consist of police officers and social services and when they catch somebody doing something unpleasant, they're supposed to give them a choice between going into outreach services or being issued a citation, which as far as we can tell, is the handing out of giant frowny faces that will be put on a giant white board in the local police station. The program will be focused on targeted areas around Union Square and SOMA, read, tourist traps. Apparently, tourists don't appreciate seeing people defecate in the streets while riding the Cable Cars and eating soup in a sourdough roll-- kinda gives new meaning to the phrase "San Francisco Treat." Gavin has been putting putting some of these policies into effect lately but is now making a bigger deal out of it.

This, of course, was accompanied by a big press conference on Wednesday detailing all of Gavin's success so far on the homeless issue, mainly on how well Care Not Cash has been working so far. To take away some of his thunder, homeless advocates had a dueling press conference where they attacked the Mayor for how well Care Not Cash has been working so far. Piling on was Chris Daly who leaked the memo on Gavin's new plans and used it as a way of attack Gavin’s emphasis on citations over housing.

Photo of Gavin trying to figure out where the ultimate Frisbee game is from the Examiner

There's a gym at the Super Mondo Corporation where we work and today there was some big volunteer thing going on with a bunch of kids learning basketball moves. Attending the big goings on was Thunder, the mascot of the Golden State Warriors. Or at least we think it was really the Thunder (who knows if it was really him behind the mask. There could be hundreds of people out there dressed like him to do publicity stuff, like how Krusty once hired Barney to pretend he was him at Kamp Krusty). Now the funny thing is that we happened to notice that right outside of the gym was a limo and standing in front of the limo was the limo driver, just waiting around for what we guessed was Thunder to finish up. So, yes, for those of you wondering, Thunder gets driven around in a limo.

No word if he got into the limo in or out of his costume. We thought about waiting around in the men's locker room to see if he would come up to change but decided not to when we realized that could look kind of creepy.

Reds 4 Giants 2- Oh, Matt Cain, what did you do to deserve this? He lost again last night after giving up only two runs in six innings. One of them, the one that gave him the L, came as a result of first a horrible call by the third base umpire and then a little flair that went off the glove of second baseman Eugenio Velez. With those two runs, his ERA is now up to 3.68 which still puts him in the top 30 in the league for ERA. He has a better ERA than Greg Maddux, Justin Verlander and Chien-Ming Wang. Wang, btw, has 18 wins. Also, batters are only hitting .235 against him, better than, well, a whole hell of a lot of other pitchers. If there's any consololation for the Cainer it's that somebody looked at some numbers and came up with some stat called "Worst Records by Pitchers Who Are That Unhittable" and he's ranked fifth, right below such notables as Nolan Ryan and Walter Johnson. Pretty good company, there. Pretty, pretty, pretty good. So cheer up, Matt, anytime you get to be in the same company as Ryan and the Big Train your in good company.

It is not often that an event we attend simply blows away its billing. Friday night, however, we managed to procure tickets to the single greatest game in the last 13 years of Warriors home game history. We watched the Warriors fearlessly and recklessly dismantle the Dallas Mavericks as the Warriors guards absolutely abused the Mavericks back court and the front line compensated their (relatively) small dimensions with oversized heart, hustle, desire and effort. While we have watched many Warriors games this year we can't help but say that something has clicked recently, because this team just doesn't care. They don't care about how they "should" play the game, hoisting 3's even when they have numbers on fast breaks and switching on screams so that 6 foot guards are defending 7 foot centers. They don't care that they "should" be losing. And they definitely don't care that Dallas "should" be the anointed ones this season and that Nellie's X's and O's "should" not work in the long run.

We were thinking of commenting more on the game itself, but really, what more can we really say? As GSW fans we awoke this morning with a smile and throat that hurt from 48 minutes of screaming and laughing to no end, and palms that stung from high-fiving other elated fans. And while our seats were not the greatest (section 218, anyone?) the crowd more than made up for it with 20,629 screaming, standing fans, wearing the awegliest (awesome + ugliest and we did just make that up , What's it to you?) yellow shirts which stated "We Believe."

Maybe our favorite memory was on the long BART ride home, when a dozen or so fans, an hour after the game had ended, took up their thunder sticks and began, once again, with the a chant which has been dormant for far too long: "Lets Go Warriors, bum, bum bu-bu-bu."

Image from our busted-phone because our busted-digital camera really is busted.

Big G took a break from his busy thunder-stealing schedule on Sunday to watch his lady friend, Jennifer Siebel, act her heart out at the Cinequest Film Festival in San Jose. The movie is The Trouble With Romance. It looks amazing.

According to NBC 11, Gavin will be showing off some photos he took himself tonight on the 11p.m. news. We wait with bated breath. Gavin Newsom, Renaissance Man!

Nice to see Gavin doing productive things now that he can't drink. Did he take any pictures while he was riding the J-Church?

Picture of Gaviffer from NBC11.com.

Image replaced to avoid hotlinking. Photo of Tina Turner's cat courtesy of the Institute for Private Dancing Studies.

If Alex Tourk had a MySpace page, he would have moved Gavin from the #1 spot on his Top 8 after he heard about the affair, and deleted Gavin as a friend. So Gavin trying to be nice on Alex's birthday was like Gavin trying to re-friend Alex, and being denied. Gavin's gonna rot in Alex's hypothetical friend request box for all of eternity because they aren't even RealSpace friends anymore.

Alex was going to announce his future plans on Wednesday, but Gavin had go steal his thunder. Again. We didn't know what Alex was going to say before that, and now we really don't know. That would have been, like, news. Thanks a lot, Gavin!

Name-dropping isn't our thing (unless it's our name that's being dropped, duh), but we interviewed Alex back when we were a bright-eyed, pixie-haired intern at 7x7. The interview was for the Hot 20 Under 40 issue. We can remember being clueless as to who Alex was before the interview, only that he worked for Gavin and was really important.

Image replaced to avoid hotlinking. Photo of Tina Turner's cat courtesy of the Institute for Private Dancing Studies.

It's not that it's rainy. We can handle the rain, or at least be okay with it. It's always rainy this time of year. No. What's getting to us is the whole schizo-ness of the weather. First it's sunny. Then it rains. For about ten minutes. Then it stops for a few hours. Then it rains again for a few minutes. Then it's sunny again. For a few minutes. Then it rains again, usually at the exact moment we get off of BART or are coming back from lunch.

Oh, and then there's the hail. And the occasional bout of thunder and lightning. And the snow, which is kind of cool in a way if it didn't signify the fact that it's also cold as hell. Then there’s the fact that it's not the usually misty, drizzly, wussy rain you typical get here in NoCal. Nope, it's the full on raining cats and dogs type rain. Or at least it is for the few minutes when it does rain.

You know how in every disaster movie, right before the end comes, the weather goes all nuts and it makes even the doubters say, "Oh my God, we need to do something"? That's what the weather is like these days. You know, like right now there's some crazy scientist saying there's a big huge hole in the ozone layer and that the end is nigh and we need to do something but they're being totally ignored by a bunch of scared and witless politician types. But, of course, that would never happen because that only happens in movies.

How crazy has it been? We've left our office in pouring rain only to see it completely sunny and dry about five miles outside the office. During our commute, we've gone in and out of rainstorms as the storm cloud and traffic seems to be competing to see who can get to the city faster. We've also been completely caught in the rain only to look out and see the sun shining not more than fifty feet away from us.

As a result, we pretty much don't know what to wear anymore. Do we wear rain clothes or winter clothes or our big, huge, winter parkas? Should we bring an umbrella or not? And as much as an umbrella is needed, it is a pain to have to constantly schlep the sucker around all the time. Not to mention the fact that the more we carry it, the bigger the chance we have of losing it. Now we just say screw it and grab our rain jacket and umbrella everywhere we go, even if it's just to the corner store or across the street from work to get some lunch. We've just plain old given up.

All we can say is this weather sucks. Well, that and where the hell is spring?