Sunday's dry spell helped the Bay Area briefly recover from a powerful storm over New Year's weekend, but a Pineapple Express — a term meteorologists use to describe a flow of moisture from areas just north of Hawaii directly into the Pacific Northwest that is typically accompanied by heavy rain — is on its way to the area and will generate a midweek storm in the Bay Area, forecasters said Monday.
Clean-up efforts to rescue flooded basements and clear mudslides from roads will therefore be halted by the storm, which is expected to hit late Tuesday and into the early hours of Wednesday.
Soils already saturated by last weekend's downpours will only intensify the impacts of the new storm, which this time will be accompanied by strong winds, the National Weather Service for San Francisco and the Bay Area said.
The latest system could bring a repeat of recent flooding and the National Weather Service is urging residents to prepare for rising creeks, falling trees, mudslides and power outages.
Most areas will see light rain starting Monday afternoon and evening, setting the stage for the big storm, according to the National Weather Service.
The showers will be more intense from Wednesday afternoon until early Thursday morning and will be accompanied by strong winds. Scattered showers are expected to continue from Thursday until early Friday morning.
The weather service said totals as of Tuesday night are expected to reach between 4.5 and 6.5 inches in the Santa Lucia Mountains and Big Sur coast.
The coastal mountains in the North Bay are forecast to see 4.5 to 6.5 inches, and the Santa Cruz Mountains and northern Monterey Bay will see 3.5 to 6 inches.
The inland North Bay is expected to get 2.75 to 5 inches. San Francisco, along with the East Bay and South Bay areas, are forecast to get 1.5 to 3 inches.
Southern and eastern Monterey Bay is expected to see 2 to 3 inches and the Salinas Valley/San Benito County area 1.5 to 3 inches.
During the latest storm, San Francisco had its second-wettest day on record, when the city received 5.46 inches of rain on Dec. 31, just shy of the all-time record of 5.54 inches of rain set on Nov. 5, 1994, according to Jan Null, a certified meteorologist with Golden Gate Weather Services.
That brought San Francisco's December total to 11.60 inches, the wettest December 15 on record for the city, which has held a rainfall record since 1849.
With information from Bay City News.
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