Cold Snap Continues

Snowfall reports were fairly sparse around the Bay Area on Saturday, but when it did come down near Hollister, Gilroy and the Carmel area – it did look pretty impressive. The clip at the beginning of this weather forecast shows wet snowflakes reaching sea level courtesy of a heavier shower. What you are also seeing are ice pellets, sometimes called ‘graupel’ that are small, soft bits of ice that fall to the ground, sometimes confused with hail. One of the differences you may find is these ‘graupel’ or ice pellet showers occur without any thunder or stronger convective updrafts. In any case, the moisture has moved on and as skies clear and some pretty chilly air remains behind – we’ll wake to 20s and 30s and patchy ice around the Bay Area on Sunday morning. With more sunshine, afternoon highs should reach the low to mid 50s. Then as we move into the work week – look for rain starting north of San Francisco on Monday, and for the most part hanging out north the Golden Gate through Tuesday. Then Tuesday and Wednesday, computer models spin up a 992-998 mb low and track it towards southern Oregon. Should this pan out, we should see some fairly gusty conditions for Wednesday and what should be our rainiest day of the week as well. Some showers will follow into Thursday before things dry out a bit for Friday. The work week pattern will be more ‘zonal’ in nature – meaning our incoming weather systems will be more mild while at the some time, packing more moisture as well. Enjoy your Sunday! – Rob Mayeda