A band of moisture passed over the San Francisco Bay Area on Wednesday night, bringing showery weather across the region.
A prior system and the lingering showers added up to some rainfall totals that are impressive for mid-October, often a dry month in Northern California.
The National Weather Service said its downtown San Francisco gauge recorded 0.21 inches, and the Oakland gauge 0.11 inches from 5 to 8 p.m.
“It really beefed up when it arrived onshore,” Ryan Walbrun, a forecaster with the weather service, said of the band of moisture that reached San Francisco this evening.
The weather service also noted that in the North Bay, Santa Rosa was running 176% of normal rainfall for the water year that started Oct. 1.
The Santa Rosa Airport recorded 1.41 inches from Oct. 1-20; the normal total for this timeframe is 0.8 inches.
The Bay Area is in the middle of a wet spell, with two weak storms expected to hit the region Thursday night and Saturday night, before a potent atmospheric river delivers a soaking Sunday into Monday. Walbrun said Wednesday night that it remained unclear exactly where the big storm will dump the most rain.
“There’s still uncertainty in where the heaviest bands are going to line up,” Walbrun said. “What’s showing a strong signal is the amount of water vapor that will be possible out of this thing. The worst-case scenarios would be if it stalled somewhere. I think for the Bay Area, this is going to be a beneficial rain. We don’t have the burn scars that some of the other areas have. To get some October rains like this is a good thing overall.”