Northern California’s weekend forecast is drying up. Here’s where light rain may fall
A once-promising outlook for rain throughout Northern California this coming weekend has shriveled up, with the latest forecasts predicting scant showers that will miss the capital and the Bay Area.
Chances of rain in those regions “have all but vanished,” the National Weather Service’s Bay Area office tweeted Thursday morning.
The NWS now says light showers are only expected in the very northern reaches of the Sacramento Valley, such as Redding, and in the northern Sierra Nevada range and its nearby foothills. Those two areas, plus the far northern reaches of California above them, are predicted to get less than a tenth of an inch. The northwest coastal range, starting around Eureka, could get slightly more rain — between one-tenth and one-quarter of an inch, the NWS says.
Most or all of the precipitation is expected Saturday night.
But in Sacramento and the North Bay area, the latter the site of the destructive Glass Fire that fire crews are still fighting to contain, forecasts now call for no rain at all this weekend.
Widespread rain remains desperately needed in a state that’s been ravaged by wildfires since the second half of summer. Critically dry vegetation has, for months, been fuel for the explosively growing fires and fire complexes that have burned record-shattering acreage and destroyed hundreds of homes across California.
Along with the Glass Fire in the Napa-Sonoma area, Cal Fire and U.S. Forest Service crews are still battling the 1 million-acre August Complex centered around Mendocino National Forest; the North Complex in Butte and Plumas counties; the Creek Fire in Fresno County; the Zogg Fire just west of Redding; and several other major incidents.
As most recently forecast, showers could help provide some relief at the August Complex and dampen its smoke output, and could help finish off the the Zogg Fire, which Cal Fire said Thursday morning is already nearing full containment at 90%. They could also fall over parts of the North Complex, though that appears to be more borderline.
Temperatures are still on track to drop into the mid-70s Thursday and Friday in Sacramento, and 77 degrees on Saturday, with cloudy conditions all three days. But sunshine is expected to return on an 80-degree Sunday, and Monday is forecast to reach 85 — back to a few degrees above average.
This week’s cooling trend will follow a similar pattern of fairly uniform temperatures across all of interior Northern California: Thursday’s predicted highs range within the 70s everywhere from the North Bay to Sacramento to South Lake Tahoe, according to the NWS.
Those relatively cool temperatures will also help with statewide firefighting efforts, but the drier storm track remains a disappointment.
Weather experts have said repeatedly that California needs widespread and significant rainfall to bring the wildfire season to end. Though it looked like there was a slim chance of that happening as of wetter forecasts earlier in the week, it’s now clear that this weekend’s system won’t come close to dealing a finishing blow to the 2020 fire year.
Climate change and California wildfires
Wildfires have always been part of life in California. The past four years have brought some of the most destructive and deadliest wildfires in the state’s modern history.
Nearly 180 people have lost their lives since 2017. More than 41,000 structures have been destroyed and nearly 7 million acres have burned. That’s roughly the size of Massachusetts.
So far this year, at least 30 people have died, according to Cal Fire.
Meanwhile, this year’s August was the hottest on record in California. A rare series of lightning storms sparked a series of fires, including the August Complex that has burned more than 1 million acres, making it by far the largest wildfire in California’s recorded history.
The 2017 wildfire season occurred during the second-hottest year on record in California and included a devastating string of fires in October that killed 44 people and destroyed nearly 9,000 buildings in Napa, Lake, Sonoma, Mendocino, Butte and Solano counties.
The following year was the most destructive and deadliest for wildfires in the state’s history. It included the Camp Fire, which destroyed the town of Paradise and killed 85 people, and the enormous Mendocino Complex.
This story was originally published October 8, 2020 at 7:10 AM with the headline "Northern California’s weekend forecast is drying up. Here’s where light rain may fall."
