The first rainy weather that most Bay Area residents have seen in months marked yet another sign that autumn is in full swing, beyond the cluttered leaves on sidewalks and distinctly darker evening hours.
By noon, the scattered morning showers had delivered just five-hundredths of an inch to Oakland, twelve-hundredths of an inch to San Francisco, a tenth of an inch to Concord and little to none in San Jose, according to National Weather Service officials.
A moderate chance of thunderstorms up north in Butte, Mendocino and Shasta counties persisted into Sunday afternoon, but there’s nothing close to that on the Bay Area’s forecast.
“We’re expecting the rain to basically taper off as the evening progresses, and by tomorrow morning it should be relatively past us,” said Dial Hoang, an NWS meteorologist in the Bay Area, who added that more precipitation might come down the Peninsula before next weekend.
The light dose of rain served as a reminder of the colder months just ahead on the calendar. Meteorologists have predicted that an early bird El Niño, which formed in the summer, could likely mean warmer, wetter winter months in California.
Still fresh on the minds of Bay Area residents is last year’s winter, which brought a flurry of successive rainstorms — including several atmospheric rivers — that did not relent until late in March.
The much-needed wet season reversed a drought that had extended multiple years in California, replenishing the state’s reservoirs and snow packs. It also pounded the Bay Area’s cities, worsening potholes and ruining many residents’ New Years Eve plans.
But the rains on Sunday — which resulted in no known damage to infrastructure in local cities, per weather officials — do not indicate much about how wet this upcoming season might turn out to be, meteorologists said.
On social media, NWS Bay Area summed up its assessment of the downpour: “Not bad for October.”
