How much rain in Modesto and snow in the mountains will there be this week?
After a few sunny days to dry off, Modesto will be visited by another storm early this week, bringing as much as an inch of rain, the National Weather Service predicts.
Monday is expected to be mostly sunny, with a high temperature near 65 degrees. But the weather system arriving Monday night carries a 40% chance of rain after 11 p.m. That increases to a 70% chance Tuesday, mostly before 5 p.m. By Tuesday night, the chance of rain falls to 30%.
Monday night’s rainfall could be between a tenth and a quarter inch, the weather service says, and Tuesday’s precipitation could bring the storm’s total to between half an inch and an inch.
The rest of the week is expected to be sunny. High temperatures are predicted to be near 56 Tuesday, 57 Wednesday, 59 Thursday and 61 Friday and Saturday.
Heavy mountain snow will impact the region into Tuesday, according to the forecast. Snow levels will begin around 4,500 to 5,500 feet Monday, lowering to around 4,000 to 5,000 feet Tuesday.
Tioga Pass could get up to 18 inches of snow, and the Sonora and Ebbetts passes might see as much as 2 feet.
Until last week, Modesto was having an extremely dry rain season. As of Jan. 26, nearly seven months into the season, the Modesto Irrigation District had recorded only 1.39 inches. By Jan. 31, average seasonal rainfall is 6.64 inches, according to MID archives.
But Wednesday through Friday, a wet, windy and cold storm dropped 6.27 inches in Modesto, bringing the season total thus far to an above average 7.61 inches.
Before last week’s storm, the state was on pace for precipitation totals below the winter of 1976-77, the second-worst drought in California’s modern history, The Sacramento Bee reported. And still, California remains well below average in total precipitation and storage in critically important reservoirs across the state, it said.
“One week doesn’t change a dry situation,” David Rizzardo, chief of the hydrology branch at the state’s Department of Water Resources, told The Sacramento Bee. He and other water experts say the state needs several more downpours over the next few months to have a wet season.
This story was originally published January 31, 2021 at 12:24 PM.
