Has the rain spigot been turned off? Here’s what the forecast holds for Fresno, Valley
Storm systems that rolled through Fresno and the central San Joaquin Valley dropped some much-needed rain on the region Friday and early Saturday, but the coming week looks like it will be dry as temperatures warm back up.
About .11 inches of rain fell at Fresno Yosemite International Airport by Friday afternoon, said Jim Bagnall, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service office in Hanford, and another .06 inches arrived Friday night and early Saturday morning. Chances of more rain through scattered showers continued into Saturday evening.
“But it looks like (Saturday night) is going to wrap up the rain chances for this upcoming week,” Bagnall told The Fresno Bee. “Sunday we could see some lingering clouds, but generally it’s going to be sunny” through the end of the week.
Bagnall said the forecast for Fresno calls for temperatures to climb from a predicted high of 55 degrees on Saturday to 61 on Sunday. By midweek, temperatures will reach into the low 70s, topping out at about 73 by next weekend. The normal highs for this time of year in Fresno are about 66 degrees.
In the Sierra Nevada east of Fresno, a winter weather advisory was in place at higher elevations through at least 10 p.m. Saturday because of the prospect of snow showers.
Bagnall said the snow level dropped as low as 2,000 feet, but wasn’t sticking to accumulate.
At higher elevations such as China Peak near Huntington Lake, one to three inches of snow were expected to fall into Saturday afternoon. The high temperature on Saturday was predicted to reach 24 degrees, warming to 35 on Sunday, 38 on Monday and 41 by Tuesday.
Unusual event
Friday’s storm was out of the ordinary for the San Joaquin Valley, Bagnall said – not because it rained, but because of how the rain was distributed from the north end of the Valley to the south.
“The first system took a slightly different trajectory than we initially expected. This one dropped more rain to the south than to the north,” Bagnall said. “Typically the south end of the Valley gets less rainfall, and up to the north in Merced they get more. This one was kind of reversed. From Fresno County northward got less, but Bakersfield got a record amount for the day.”
At the Meadows Field airport in Bakersfield, about .69 inches of rain fell on Friday. The previous record for the date was .45 inches in 1995.
Fresno, by contrast, came nowhere close to its March 4 rainfall record of .98 inches, set in 1978.
This story was originally published March 5, 2022 at 11:55 AM.
