Fresno faces forecast of a rainy week and a wet Christmas. Here’s what to expect
Fresno and the rest of the central San Joaquin Valley could experience several days of rain and the prospect of a wet Christmas following a foggy and chilly Sunday morning.
As much as two inches of rain could fall in the Fresno area, and clouds also could drop snow on higher elevations of the Sierra Nevada, starting Tuesday and continuing through Saturday, said Jim Bagnall, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Hanford.
A mass of cold air sent temperatures to near freezing early Sunday, and the local Weather Service office anticipated areas of patchy frost. A dense-fog advisory was in effect until noon Sunday with visibility falling to as little as 200 to 800 feet in low-lying areas, primarily on the west side of the San Joaquin Valley but also in Fresno and Clovis.
After clearing to a sunny afternoon, clear skies on Sunday night are expected to lead to another frosty morning in some locations Monday.
That’s going to change Tuesday, as the first of several storm pulses moves in from the Pacific Ocean, Bagnall told The Fresno Bee on Sunday. “There’s going to be some cloudiness ahead of the system, and that keeps us warmer and makes it harder to form fog,” he said. “Depending on the timing of that, when it arrives, that will tell how Tuesday morning will pan out.”
The multiple pulses will be something of a one-two-three weather punch for the Valley, starting out with a warmer storm that, while it’s coming from the cold northern Pacific Ocean is pulling in moisture from the southwest, “so it’s a warmer event ahead of the main system,” Bagnall explained.
It will be followed by colder pulses later in the week.
Tuesday’s initial blow could bring precipitation to higher elevations of the Sierra Nevada as early as that morning, spreading over the Valley floor Tuesday afternoon and evening. “The best part will be late Tuesday night,” Bagnall said. Snow levels may be at elevations above 6,000 to 7,000 feet, with rain falling at lower elevations.
More rain will be coming Wednesday and Thursday, with chances of rain Friday and more likely Saturday.
“We’re going to have chances of rain and snow continuing into the end of the week,” Bagnall said. “It may not be continuously raining or snowing for all of that period, ... but the forecast between the time it starts Tuesday through the end of the week looks like almost two inches of rain for Fresno.”
By the weekend, snow levels in the Sierra could drop to elevations as low as 3,000 to 4,000 feet, “so it could be a white Christmas for a lot of the areas above that elevation,” Bagnall added.
This week’s storms will contribute to what already has been a wetter-than-normal December for Fresno and the Valley.
In a normal year, Fresno typically has about nine-tenths of an inch of rain through the first 19 days of December. So far, Bagnall said, rainfall has been almost double that average, at 1.77 inches. “We’re just going to add to that this week, so we’ll be well ahead of a normal December month,” he said.
This story was originally published December 19, 2021 at 11:27 AM.
