High clouds began to build up in the San Francisco Bay Area Saturday afternoon as an autumn storm headed towards the Northern California coast.
“By early Sunday morning, most of the Bay Area will start raining if it hasn’t already,” said Brooke Bingaman, a National Weather Service meteorologist at the San Francisco Bay Area office.
The storm, which moves south of the Gulf of Alaska, is expected to bring record rainfall to parts of the Bay Area and could also deliver some relief to the fire brigade fight the Mosquito Fire in Placer County, the largest fire in the state this year.
The fire area “is expected to have rainfall on Sunday night or early Monday,” said Scott Row, a meteorologist with the Sacramento National Weather Service. “Rain is expected in most of Northern California.”
The weather system can bring humidity all the way to Santa Barbara. Ventura and Los Angeles will be largely unaffected.
Historical data suggests that it is not uncommon for northern California to rain in September. Most unusual is the amount of rain the storm is expected to bring: up to double or even quadruple the monthly average in some areas.
For example, current forecasts indicate that downtown San Francisco will receive a total of 1 inch of rain over the next few days. The city’s average monthly rainfall for September is a quarter of an inch.
Rain is expected to be heavy on Sunday, but forecasters said the storm overall should be beneficial, not dangerous. Minor and annoying floods are possible and with wind speeds of between 20 and 30 mph and gusts of up to 45 mph along the coast and in coastal mountains, power outages can occur.
If you live in a part of California where no rain is expected this time, don’t worry too much, said Kristen Stewart, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service’s Oxnard office.
“We still have a whole winter ahead of us,” he said. “Let’s hope more will come.”
This story originally appeared in the Los Angeles Times.
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