![]() Meteorologists still are watching the trajectory of the storm to forecast where the heaviest rains are expected. Wednesday’s storm is expected to rank as a 3 on a new scale of 1 to 5 that scientists at Scripps Institution of Oceanography and other research centers developed recently, Jay Cordeira, a meteorology professor at Plymouth State University in New Hampshire, said on Twitter. “There’s always minor damage, but the bottom line here is water, and this is good for the water supply.” “It could be the most intense storm so far of this winter,” he said. Patzert said as of Monday afternoon it looked as if the storm will cause some localized flooding and snow blizzards in the Sierra, but that overall it will benefit California’s water supply, particularly by boosting groundwater tables still low in some areas after the 2012-16 drought. Such storms are vital to the water supply of California and other Western states, with about a dozen providing up to 50 percent of the annual water supply in most years. They can be 250 miles wide, 1,000 miles long and can carry 20 times as much water per second as the Mississippi River where it empties into the Gulf of Mexico. Forecast lows overnight are expected to remain in the 40s with daytime highs in the 50s.Ītmospheric rivers are a particularly moisture-heavy, intense type of storm. Unlike last week’s storms, this week’s won’t bring snow to Bay Area peaks. “Given the saturated soils and expected rainfall, trees will likely come down,” the weather service wrote in its Monday forecast. Sustained winds of 30 to 40 mph are expected Wednesday with gusts of 60 to 70 mph in the hills. “There is still some uncertainty with how much rain,” will fall and how long it will last, Tangen said. In the Bay Area, storm totals from Tuesday night through Thursday morning are forecast to range from 2 to 3 inches in the North Bay, 1 to 2 inches along the Peninsula, East Bay and South Bay and 4 to 6 inches along the coastal mountains, with some mountain areas receiving 8 inches. This will cause an #AtmosphericRiver with a tropical tap to take aim at California on Wednesday. GOES-17 shows two troughs- one off the Pac NW coast and one near Hawaii. This potent storm is the result of a cold front moving down from the Pacific Northwest, combining with a plume of subtropical moisture moving in from Hawaii, according to the weather service. Late last week, meteorologists and scientists studying computer models included the potential for this atmospheric river storm, which at the time was projected to be centered over Central or Southern California.īut over the weekend the forecast shifted, and the storm is now expected to have a greater impact in the Bay Area and Northern California, they say. “Rain may be heavy at times as the atmospheric river moves onto land.” “Rain will spread over the area early Wednesday morning and impact the morning commute quite a bit,” said Spencer Tangen, a meteorologist with the weather service in Monterey.
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