GILROY
– South Valley residents should brace themselves for a wild
weather ride tonight and tomorrow as an unusually strong storm
brewed in the Gulf of Alaska strikes the region.
GILROY – South Valley residents should brace themselves for a wild weather ride tonight and tomorrow as an unusually strong storm brewed in the Gulf of Alaska strikes the region.
Two back-to-back storm fronts are approaching California and could drop as much as three inches of rain and create wind gusts of up to 45 mph, said Diana Henderson, a forecaster at the National Weather Service’s Monterey office.
“It’ll get here tonight and tomorrow” she said. “The big worry is how gusty it’s going to get. Being out on the highway is not something I want to do now.”
The storm is a low-pressure system cold front coming from the Gulf of Alaska and has passed through Washington and Oregon, she said. The valley should expect two to three inches of rain. The storm will drop from four to six inches in the mountains.
Along the Pacific coast, she said, it will build 15-foot waves. The beach areas are having 6-foot high tides so coastal communities are preparing for possible flooding on Friday.
Temperatures are expected to be in the upper 50s and lower 60s today and Friday.
The first vestiges of the storm came through Wednesday evening, dropping about one-11th of an inch of rain at the San Jose Airport between the hours of midnight and 5 a.m., Henderson said. The National Weather Service did not have rain measurements for the South Valley area on Thursday morning, she said.
Thunderstorms are possible in the hill areas of Santa Clara Valley tonight, she said.
“It should start tapering off Friday night,” she said.
Saturday morning will see partly cloudy skies and a chance of showers, Henderson said. Sunday should be partly cloudy and Veterans Day is expected to have clear skies, she said. By Wednesday of next week, there’s a chance of rain clouds coming through again.
The local agriculture industry looks forward to the storm coming through.
Kip Brundage, owner of G & K Farms in Gilroy and president of the Santa Clara County Farm Bureau, called the rain “cool.”
“For all the winter crops going in, this is needed,” he said. “There is never any one farm that is totally ready, but we’ve known this rain is coming and overall people are prepared for it.”
He will be glad to get one to two inches from the rain, he said.
In the South Valley region, many farmers are growing broccoli, cauliflower, lettuce and cereal grains such as wheat, barley and oats, he said. Also, farmers are preparing their ground for the spring planting.
The storms are also seen as a blessing to skiers as they will drop several inches of snow on the Sierra Mountains.
