A monthlong pattern of low pressure and stormy weather may finally be reaching the end of its cycle, and a pattern that may bring a longer stretch of clear and sunny days appears poised to takes its place, according to the National Weather Service.
That said, it’s likely to take the rest of the work week to get there.
“Once we get to Thursday evening, and the rain thins out, that might be it for a while,” NWS meteorologist Brayden Murdock said. “There’s going to be a shift to a much-more neutral pattern, and a lot of the rain chances are going to to trail off to the north.”
Until then?
“We’re still dealing with lingering showers,” Murdock said of a third November storm that dumped heavy showers on the region Monday night, including 1.14 inches of rain in San Francisco. That total broke the record for the day previously set in 1996.
The expected showers Tuesday were “not expected to be terribly impactful” and are expected to be finished in the region sometime in the evening, Murdock said. That system then will be followed by another weaker system from the Gulf of Alaska that is likely to drop lighter amounts of rain beginning late Wednesday in some areas and overnight into Thursday in others.
That system is expected to drop no more than two-thirds to three-quarters of an inch of rain at the heaviest spots and probably no more than a half-inch in the the East Bay and South Bay, according to the weather service.
“It’s considerably less powerful,” Murdock said. “As far as widespread rain, those are good chances. But the amount that is going to fall is going to be a lot smaller.”
The latest storm brought its heaviest rain to the East Bay and South Bay on Monday night, but proved to be less powerful than the atmospheric river storm that preceded it. The weather service’s 24-hour rainfall totals early Tuesday showed a half-inch of rain on Ben Lemond and a quarter-inch at Mt. Umunhum in the Santa Cruz Mountains, the highest recorded totals.
Elsewhere, the weather service recorded a quarter-inch in Fremont and Livermore, .16 inches at San Francisco International Airport, .04 inches in San Jose and .03 inches in downtown Oakland.
“Hopefully, we’ll see the final bit of the last of the showers finally erode (Wednesday) evening,” Murdock said. “There’s a lot of extra moisture, and the low-pressure system itself is swirling around our area. So we’re getting rain from various directions.”
The departure of the rain is not expected to take with it the cold temperatures. High temperatures in the hottest spots are not expected to get past 61 degrees for the rest of the week, and overnight lows are expected to dip into the mid-40s.