The loud sound that came with sheets of rain and fierce wind of an atmospheric river storm that whipped through the Bay Area on Thursday and dumped more than five inches of precipitation in some places and more than a half-inch elsewhere quieted Friday.
Call it the calm before the next storm — a new incoming system that may be aided by the the fading remnants of the first one.
“It’s kind of looking mostly dry” on Friday, Dalton Behringer of the National Weather Service said. “There’s gonna be a chance for some showers mainly in the Central Coast. Actually, a lot of people may see some sun. Then Saturday, we’ll get back to a better chance for some more widespread rain. It won’t be as heavy, and the better chances are south, but it’s gonna be all over (the region). That’ll lead us into the next one and that’s probably gonna come Sunday evening. That’s gonna be a band of heavy rain again.”
On Friday, the region remained damp despite any flashing the sun showed, and that made sense given some of the rain totals.
The biggest deluge came in the Santa Cruz Mountains, where Ben Lomond received 5.33 inches of rain over Wednesday and Thursday, according to the weather service. The storm also pounded the North Bay, with more than 4½ inches falling in areas of Sonoma County north of Santa Rosa.
Closer to the central part of the Bay Area, the weather service measured 1½ inches in downtown Oakland and at San Francisco International Airport. Livermore (.07 inches); Concord (.06) and San Jose (.05) all were affected by a rain shadow typical from atmospheric river storms and received less than an inch.
Those cumulative totals are likely to increase as the backside of the atmospheric river circulates back over the region. Then as that wraps up, moisture from a system that’s developed in toward the south will warm the region before mixing with low pressure that’s coming from the upper northwest, Behringer said.
That mix is expected to create stormy conditions by Sunday night. That storm will be a quick-hitting one, Behringer said, with another break from the rain coming on Monday and Tuesday before yet another storm system is likely to pass through Wednesday and Thursday.
“We’re in that wet weather pattern,” he said, adding that the weather service is not sure how long the pattern will stay in place. “We anticipate that’s it’s going to remain an active one.”
