Rain! Remember rain? Between the wildfires and the election season it's hard to remember a time when rain fell out of the sky in the Bay Area — though there were a few scattered drops during those lightning storms in August, just not enough to stop everything from catching fire.
Forecasts earlier in the week didn't indicate that rain was a sure thing outside of the far North Bay. But now the National Weather Service is predicting rain — at least a smattering of it — over most of the Bay Area beginning Friday morning. Depressingly, one of the crispiest spots that most needs it the most, in the Sonoma and Napa hills, looks to be the exact spot that will get the least rainfall, according to the NWS.
This spinning blob of clouds sliding south from the Gulf of Alaska will evolve into the storm system bringing wetter and much cooler weather to central California by the end of the week. Seen here courtesy of satellite viewer from @CIRA_CSU #CAwx pic.twitter.com/mE4EeQEZfn
— NWS Hanford (@NWSHanford) November 5, 2020
San Francisco and the coast all the way down to Big Sur have a chance of seeing slightly more significant showers on Friday night. And a second wave of rain hits on Saturday as well.
This will come with a drop in temperatures, too, as reported earlier this week. Weekend highs are expected to be in the 50s or low 60s, with first frosts possible in places like Gilroy and Morgan Hill.
"This is the most significant rain of the season so far," says Roger Gass, meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Monterey, speaking to the Mercury News. "It isn’t going to do anything for reservoirs. But we’ll take what we can get."
The NWS has also issued a Winter Storm Watch for the Sierra starting Friday, and extending through Sunday. Snowfall of 12 to 15 inches could be possible at higher elevations, finally giving a good kickoff for a pandemic ski season.
