Storm to bring rain, chill, fire relief
Michael Cabanatuan
Updated 11:26 p.m., Sunday, October 21, 2012
The first significant storm of the season is expected to dampen the Bay Area for the next three days, ending a six-month spell of dangerously dry weather, slickening highways and possibly snuffing the dying embers of fire season.
According to the National Weather Service, rain was expected to start falling throughout the Bay Area by early Monday and continue steadily all day. Then look for on-and-off showers through Wednesday, said Duane Dykema, a weather service forecaster.
The rain will bring lower temperatures - with highs in the mid-50s to lower 60s - that will linger once the dry weather returns on Thursday. Those temperatures, Dykema said, are about 10 to 15 degrees below normal for this time of year.
But this tends to be an unpredictable time of year, weatherwise. As Bay Area residents know well, the coastal fog tends to disappear more quickly and frequently than usual, yielding to warm, almost balmy weather in September and October. But in late October or early November, fall takes hold, bringing crisp weather and the season's first real rainfalls.
No yardstick for season
This week's storm is a couple of weeks earlier than usual, Dykema said, but cautioned against seeing that as a sign for a nice wet rain season. Long-range forecasts from the weather service are noncommittal on the prospects for the West Coast this fall and winter.
"It would be nice if we could make some assumptions for the rest of the season based on this, but that's just not the case," he said.
As for this storm, the forecast calls for about a half inch to an inch of precipitation in San Francisco, with the North Bay coastal areas getting as much as 2 inches and the rest of the region receiving anywhere from a quarter inch in the valleys to 1 inch in the wetter regions. Nighttime temperatures are expected to drop into the 40s around the bay and the 30s in the valleys.
Snow, wind in Sierra
A winter storm warning is in effect for the Sierra Nevada, with heavy snow and gusty winds forecast through Tuesday morning by the weather service. From 10 to 18 inches of snow are expected above 7,000 feet, with 4 to 8 inches below 7,000 feet. Snow is expected to fall at Lake Tahoe and elsewhere to about 6,500 feet.
That may not be enough for most Sierra ski resorts to open for the season, but Boreal, a traditional early starter, has already announced plans to open on Oct. 31 if not sooner. Most other resorts have announced openings in mid- to late November.
While the ski resorts are greeting the early storm enthusiastically, state fire officials are breathing a tentative sigh of relief and hoping that enough rain will fall to dampen the tinder-dry vegetation that fueled a higher-than-average number of wildfires this season.
"We're definitely hoping this storm brings a significant bit of rain," said Daniel Berlant, a spokesman for the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection. "We're expecting the storm will at least reduce our fire danger."
Last rainy season's meager precipitation totals, combined with long months of temperatures reaching past 100 in much of the state's wildland regions, produced an active fire season that was still generating red-flag warnings last week.
Destructive fire season
As of last week, 5,450 wildfires had devoured 129,000 acres, Berlant said, compared with 4,000 fires and 56,000 acres the previous year and 4,600 fires and 120,000 acres in an average of the past five years.
"It all started last November, December, January - some of the driest on record," he said. "Even though we saw some rain in the spring, it wasn't enough to catch up, and we had a lot of dry vegetation."
Firefighters and ski resorts may welcome the arrival of wet weather, but most commuters probably won't. Rain, especially the first storms, brings a spate of fender benders and more serious accidents caused by motorists who forget how to drive in the rain, said CHP Officer Elon Steers, the agency's Bay Area spokesman.
"The biggest thing is to slow down, give yourself a little bit more time, and give yourself more following distance," he said. "For some reason, it takes seeing a lot of crashes for people to realize that they have to slow down."
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