When Bay Area residents wake up later this week and get a look outside, they might wonder if they’ve been transported many degrees north, with snow from an unusually cold and windy winter storm possibly carpeting the region’s major peaks and even reaching hills as low as 1,000 feet.
“Nearly (the) entire population of CA will be able to see snow from some vantage point later this week if they look in the right direction,” said Daniel Swain, a climate scientist at the University of California, tweeted Monday. “While snow remains very unlikely in California’s major cities, it’ll fall quite nearby.”
Swain and the National Weather Service say that a major system, moving down from Canada into California on Tuesday, is expected to bring strong wind gusts and rain through Friday, as well as snow — definitely to the Sierra and possibly to the Bay Area and other coastal areas.
Roger Gass, a lead forecaster with the National Weather Service, said, “There’s still a lot of unknowns at this point,” but he agreed that it’s looking “like a good set-up for snow” at the lower levels in the Bay Area.
This set-up involves a combination of precipitation and frigid temperatures from a robust cold air mass that will descend into California on Tuesday and replace the mild, spring-like temperatures of Presidents Day weekend. Temperatures are expected to struggle to rise above the 40s and 50s on Wednesday, Thursday and Friday and to dip into the 30s overnight, especially in the inland areas, creating conditions for snow to fall and to accumulate in the hills and mountains ringing Bay Area cities.
As much as Bay Area residents often react with surprise when forecasters mention the possibility of snow, it’s not an anomaly. At least every couple of years, the region’s major peaks above 3,000 feet – Mount Hamilton, Mount Diablo and Mount Umunhum and others in the Santa Cruz Mountains – get a light dusting of snow during winter storms.
Many longtime residents also remember Feb. 5, 1976, when up to 5 inches of snow fell on San Francisco’s Twin Peaks, at 922 feet, and carpeted neighborhoods around the Bay Area. The snow also reached sea level – a pretty rare occurrence – with about an inch falling in downtown San Francisco, according to meteorologist Jan Null. Dramatic aerial photos also showed white snow draped over the Marin Headlands like a sheet, down to the waters of the Golden Gate Bridge. People were photographed throwing snowballs at each other near the Palace of the Legion of Honor, while students at Stanford University erected snow people.
Before 1976, the most significant snowfall in the Bay Area was on another Feb. 5 – in 1887 – when 7 inches fell on Twin Peaks. Over the years, though, snow has made appearances that may not be so dramatic but that usually send people outside to capture snowflakes in their hands or to rush up to nearby peaks for some impromptu sledding.
Snow flurries were spotted briefly blowing around downtown San Francisco and along Bay Area beaches in December 1998, on a day when daytime temperatures dipped to record-breaking lows in the 30s and 40s, the San Francisco Chronicle reported. On another February day in 2011, a Pacific storm with a blast of Canadian air pushed some light snowfall onto Twin Peaks and into some other city neighborhoods, the New York Times said.
In February 2019, snow coated Mission Peak in Fremont and Mount Tamalpais in Marin County, as well as a Napa Valley vineyard on Atlas Peak.
Last night brought the Pahlmeyer Estate Vineyard on Atlas Peak a beautiful dusting of fresh snow. It doesn’t snow often, but when it does it’s absolutely breathtaking. 📷: Dave Wilson pic.twitter.com/U71Q8HsWna
— Pahlmeyer (@Pahlmeyer) February 5, 2019
Looks like Mount Tamalpais (elevation 2,572) in Marin County has a little dusting of snow https://t.co/331RZaEoCK pic.twitter.com/5ncB8pdDQ9
— Javier Panzar (@jpanzar) February 5, 2019
A record-breaking 38.1 inches of snow was measured that February at Lick Observatory on Mount Hamilton, at 4,200 feet. The previous record was 33.6 inches in January 1950, the National Weather Service said.
February 2019 was a wet and cool month – ideal conditions for lots of snow on #BayArea peaks. The highest peak, Mount Hamilton, set a monthly snowfall record. #CAwx #CAsnow pic.twitter.com/19ULcq3glv
— NWS Bay Area 🌉 (@NWSBayArea) March 11, 2019
During that storm, snow levels reached as low as 1,200 feet, though the National Weather Service also received reports of snow as low as 400 feet in the East Bay. Four inches of snow also were recorded at the White Oaks Campground in Big Sur, where temperatures fell to the 20s, the weather service said. More recently, the Crest Ranch Christmas Tree Farm in the Santa Cruz Mountains tweeted out photos of it getting a blanket of snow during a storm in March 2021.
Swain doesn’t expect a repeat of the 1976 storm, when snow reached sea level. But with the below-freezing temperatures and precipitation this week, “the potential is there for some very high impact snowfall down to elevations that rarely see such events.” What may make this snowfall particularly memorable is that the cold temperatures will linger for a few days, and keep the snow from melting in some areas, including in the Santa Cruz Mountains, which could see up to a foot of snow, Gass said.
If there’s another positive spin to put on this week’s storm news is that the amount of rainfall expected on Thursday and Friday should be “fairly light.” While Bay Area residents may have to worry that strong winds, of up 35 to 45 mph and lasting through Thursday, could down trees and knock out power, they won’t have to worry about flooding, Gass said. Between Wednesday and Saturday morning, the total rainfall that the Bay Area and the Salinas Valley are expected to see is up to 1 inch, with the higher elevations of Santa Cruz Mountains getting 1 to 2 inches.
“We’ll mainly see wet roadways,” said Gass, who also advises that people use caution when traveling to the Sierra Nevada, where a winter storm watch will be in effect from 10 a.m. Tuesday to 4 a.m. Saturday, with up to 5 feet of snow expected to fall at elevations above 5,000 feet.
Source: www.mercurynews.com