San Francisco Bay Space storm: What’s on deck subsequent?
An atmospheric river that soaked the San Francisco Bay Area for most of Monday pushed south this afternoon, but the chance for thunderstorms, small hailstones, high altitude snow, and isolated showers remained in the forecast for Monday evening through Tuesday, the shared National Weather Service with.
The continuous rain, which led to flooding on some streets in the Bay Area, subsided on Monday afternoon, and the weather service said the most extreme rain, with sporadic, isolated showers, was likely to be over during the course of the evening. At around 4:30 p.m., blue patches of sky could be seen through the cloud cover over San Francisco.
In the wake of the storm, colder air began to enter the region, creating unstable conditions in the atmosphere and adding the risk of thunderstorms from Monday night to Tuesday morning.
“With these cells, you could see brief hailstorms and heavy rain,” said the weather service forecaster Jeff Lorber. “You could hear the rumble of thunder and see lightning. Thunderstorm activity will not be widespread.”
Inland temperatures are expected to drop to the 30s mark overnight, offering a chance for snow on the region’s highest peaks such as Mount Diablo in East Bay and Mount Hamilton in South Bay.
As the rain subsided over the Bay Area, the storm’s hose of moisture shifted into the Santa Cruz Mountains and the Santa Lucia Mountains along the Big Sur coast.
For the fire area of the CZU Lightning Complex in the districts of Santa Cruz and San Mateo, lightning flood monitoring applies until 10:00 p.m. There is also a watch for burn scars in the Santa Lucia Mountains of Dolan and Coleman from Monday until 1:00 a.m. Tuesday. Precipitation rates of 0.50 to 0.70 inches are expected.
“It’s moving slowly across Monterey Bay down to the Big Sur coast,” said Brayden Murdock, a forecaster with the Meteorological Service. “It will be interesting to see if it stops completely in one place. In some places, up to an inch of rain an hour is recorded.”
A weaker, colder storm is expected to sweep the San Francisco Bay Area Wednesday and Thursday.
