Wet, cold weather on tap
Not much rain expected
If the forecast held, residents woke up this morning to much colder and damper weather than they have seen the past week.
Today’s high is expected to be about 15 degrees cooler than Monday when the mercury topped out about 70 degrees. Today’s expected high is 57, with a 52 predicted for Wednesday.
While the past few days have been spring-like, most will tell you rain is needed, and hopefully a good amount in a short amount of time rain.
So far this year, rainfall stands at just 3.70 inches, but storm totals have been light. Since late last year, storms have been producing less than a half of an inch of rain at one time, not enough to really soak into the ground.
There is a 55 percent chance of light rain this morning, turning to 80 percent chance of rain this afternoon and tonight, said National Weather Service Hanford meteorologist Cindy Bean.
There is a 20 percent chance on Wednesday, but again amounts will be light, maybe no more than a quarter of an inch on the Valley floor. There will be a slight chance of showers Thursday through Saturday as well, but again amounts will be light.
“It’s not a real great chance of rain,” said Bean.
The Pacific storm from the Gulf of Alaska will lower snow levels to about 2,000 feet tonight and bring the possibility of closing Interstate 5 over the Grapevine.
Snowfall in the higher elevations could amount to as much as a foot, said the National Weather Service, with a few inches in the lower elevations. A winter storm warning has been issued for the mountains above Porterville and a winter weather advisory for the foothills.
Nighttime lows are expected to dip into the low 30s Wednesday night and daytime highs will remain in the 50s until Saturday.
Even though rainfall has been light, storage in Success Lake is not that bad for mid-February. As of Monday afternoon, storage behind Success Dam was just over 19,000 acre feet.
