Storm Nears Bay Area, Offering Relief from Sunny, Droughty Skies

Updated, 8:10 p.m. Tuesday

You're starting to think the drought didn't really go away, aren't you?

Forecasters say the Bay Area will experience a brief but dramatic change to more typical February weather beginning Wednesday.

Our prolonged February spell of sunny, dry weather broke records for a second straight day Tuesday from Richmond down to San Jose and beyond.

Oakland's 82 degrees on Tuesday smashed the record of 75, set just last year. Salinas, Mountain View and Oakland Airport all bettered records set in 1977. If you've been here a while, you'll remember that as the second winter of a drought that was, until the current one, considered the most severe in California's modern history.

In fact, the high of 86 in Salinas -- yes, it's in Monterey County, so maybe that's stretching the definition of the Bay Area a little -- is the warmest February day ever recorded there.

Enough of dwelling on warm, dry weather in the midst of what we might have expected to be a robust, stormy month in the midst of a strong El Niño winter. Forecasters say our February dry spell will end Wednesday, with a moderately potent Pacific storm sweeping into the region Wednesday afternoon.

The National Weather Service's Bay Area forecast office in Monterey says rain could begin falling in earnest about the time of the Wednesday evening rush hour and continue into Thursday. The storm will not be a gullywasher or a frog-choker, with anywhere from half an inch to an inch of rain expected.

A second storm, drier than the first, is expected in at least the northern half of the Bay Area on Friday. Both systems are expected to bring a healthy dumping of snow to the northern and central Sierra Nevada, with the NWS Sacramento forecasting 1 to 2 feet of snow above the 6,000 feet and as much as 10 inches above 5,000 feet. The storm will help add to a snowpack that's running at about 100 percent of average for this time of year.

The relief from droughty weather ends Friday, with warm and sunny conditions expected for the weekend and the beginning of next week.

Monday's records are below: