Big Storm Inbound. Feet of Snow for Sierra.

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After a long, dry wait, the North Bay is in for a real storm for the weekend. And by the looks of it, the rain may continue, off and on, through the end of March.

You can see the moisture and deep low moving toward us in the North Pacific.

By late this week, the jet stream will be bending south and moving over central California as a low drops down off the coast. This will bring us rain, and heavy snow, as the low moves onshore beginning on Saturday.

Here’s how the reliable European models sees our weather for early Sunday morning.

All of the forecast models are in agreement that the storm is coming, and will drop significant rain and snow over Northern California.

Here is the blended model average for the weekend into Monday.

Others show more rain and snow for the region.

For the Sierra, where the snowpack is 50% or less of average, there will be snow measured in feet.

And the trends are for a wet last few weeks of the month. The so called “teleconnections” that track various climate patterns show our region may be cool and stormy through late month.

Here is one forecast for the West Coast trough, still hanging around on March 27th.

So all of this is good news for a region that saw almost no rain for 6 weeks, including all of February.

Is it a March Miracle? Well, not yet…but the next few weeks could be very interesting. In fact, long range models show us wetter than normal to begin April.