A cold spring storm system moving toward Southern California on Saturday is expected to bring drizzles around 3 p.m., followed by a quarter to half an inch of rain through Sunday.
“The latest storm totals should be about a quarter of an inch to 1 1/2 (inches) for mountain areas,” said meteorologist Rose Schoenfeld, of the National Weather Service’s Oxnard station.
Snow was forecast for mountains above 6,000 feet, with up to 10 inches falling on the highest peaks and dusting of up to an inch on the Grapevine through Sunday morning.
Temperatures remained steady between 50 and 60 degrees across the region Saturday, eight to 15 degrees below normal, and are expected to remain below normal through Monday.
“This weekend, temperatures will struggle to reach 60 degrees,” Schoenfeld said.
Wind gusts of 20 mph to 40 mph were expected to accompany the late-season storm, peaking along the Interstate 5 and Antelope Valley corridor.
The latest in a series of soggy weekends is expected to be followed by at least a week of warm, dry weather, starting with above-normal temperatures on Tuesday, but it won’t necessarily be the last of the season.
“For six to 10 days we don’t see any signs of a storm,” Schoenfeld said. “Beyond this uncertainty.”
Normal precipitation for April is about seven-tenths of an inch.
“If we get a quarter, we won’t be close,” Schoenfeld said, acknowledging, however, that “we rarely see a normal, regular year.”
Snow was also forecast for California’s Sierra Nevada, with up to 8 inches expected in the Mammoth Mountain area later Saturday and up to 12 inches in the highest peaks of the southern Sierra.
Meteorologist Mark Deutschendorf of the National Weather Service station in Reno said the new snowfall would moderately add to the late-season surge that has pushed the snowpack to a current level of 118% of normal.
“The general theme of this winter season is that it started out well below average, and then in February and March a series of storms pushed the totals up,” Deutschendorf said. “We were able to recover, catch up and go slightly above normal.”
Coming from the west, the system hit central California early Saturday morning, falling just over a third of an inch in San Francisco and just under four-tenths of an inch in San Jose before to cross the central coast, said Roger Gass, a meteorologist. at the National Weather Service’s Bay Area station.
Scattered showers and isolated thunderstorms were still possible Saturday afternoon, but no damage or flooding was reported, Gass said.
The precipitation brought the season total from average to 120% of average, Gass said.
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