Brisk and chilly conditions ahead will bring a bit of snow to the San Francisco Bay Area’s highest locations, and a lot more to Lake Tahoe and the Sierra, the National Weather Service said.

“We do have a very cold air mass that continues to filter into the Bay Area in wake of a cold front that moved through earlier in the day,” meteorologist Roger Gass said Sunday afternoon.

That air means that scattered and isolated rain showers, unlikely to lead to significant local rainfall, could instead yield snowfall atop elevated locations like the South Bay’s Pacheco Pass and Mount Umunhum and the East Bay’s Mount Diablo, Gass said.

Cold-air lows should drop to 2,500 feet in the North Bay’s interior valleys and parts of the East Bay through early Monday, with accumulations from a dusting up to an inch. He added: “It’s going to be very hit-or-miss as far as snow actually occurring or, you know, actually doing enough to accumulate and stick in the hills or the ground.”

Uphill from the Bay, a winter-weather advisory in effect until 11 p.m. Sunday means snow could happen down around 2,500 feet, with 1 to 3 inches of snow likely at lower elevations and 3 to 7 inches above about 4,000 feet along the northern Sierra’s western slope.

Closer to home, Bay Area residents can expect brief scattered and isolated showers with partly sunny skies and gusty winds, as well as lows dropping into the high 30s and low 40s in interior North and East Bay valleys and the low to mid-40s overnight.

Similar conditions are expected Monday and Tuesday, with drier, warmer air boosting temperatures into the high 60s to low 70s from midweek, Gass said: “That warming trend will continue into early next week, and it looks like we may even see 80s to low 90s return by Saturday and Sunday.”

Contact George Kelly at 408-859-5180.

Source: www.mercurynews.com