After warm, dry start to winter, it’s going to get wetter and colder — and that’s good!
Admit it. You’ve been enjoying the sunny afternoons, the springlike weather that lets you leave your winter coat in the closet, and your umbrella ... well, it’s Bakersfield, right? Who needs an umbrella?
Actually, it may be time to dig out the underused bumbershoot from the back of your closet.
“The pattern is shifting,” said Jim Bagnall, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Hanford.
According to Bagnall, these balmy days may be over for a while as three coming storms line up to bring cooler and wetter conditions beginning this afternoon or evening and continuing into next week.
“We’re going to see cooler and wetter weather as a series of storms move through,” he said.
And each succeeding will be colder and wetter than the last.
The first storm is expected to move into the Bakersfield area by this afternoon or evening, Bagnall said. Rainfall in greater Bakersfield is expected to be fairly light, with about 0.15 of an inch forecast in the southern San Joaquin Valley into Saturday.
Mountain residents could see some snow — “a couple inches at most” — especially in the higher elevations, the meteorologist said.
The second storm is set to arrive Sunday night and continue into Monday — and it’s expected to be wetter, with as much as one-third of an inch of precipitation falling on a thirsty city and surrounding countryside.
It’s also expected to be colder, bring snow levels lower and dump 3 to 6 inches of snow in the Kern County mountains.
But the next storm is where things may get a little crazy.
Starting Wednesday morning, the third storm sounds very wet. Bagnall was asked to repeat the number when he said the forecast predicts nearly an inch and a half of rain in the Bakersfield area. That’s one-quarter the precipitation Bakersfield receives in an average rainy season.
In one day. From one storm.
Of course, the third storm is farther out in the forecast, and meteorologists’ confidence level drops as the forecast window gets wider.
“Of course, this can change,” he said, as the calendar gets closer to Wednesday.
But for right now, the third storm is a biggie, and the mountains could get blanketed.
“Snowfall amounts could be over 12 inches,” Bagnall said, “in the highest elevations.”
If these forecasts come to pass, it could provide a significant boost to the seasonal outlook, which has been much drier than normal.
Current Kern River Basin snow sensor computer models place the 2021 Kern River snowmelt yield (with normal future precipitation conditions) at about 35 percent of normal.
Last year was just 42 percent of normal, and 2019 was only a little better at 48 percent of normal.
According to Bagnall, this series of storms — and possibly more to come — should be a benefit to the extreme moisture deficit that has developed in the Kern River watershed, which is essentially Bakersfield’s lifeblood.
“These storms should help alleviate some of that deficit,” he said.