Shorts, sunglasses will give way to umbrellas
Friday continues a stretch of unseasonal warmth, before rain is expected to move into the area Sunday as Thanksgiving weekend travelers return home
SAN JOSE >> A week-long stretch of unseasonably warm weather in the Bay Area continued Friday with San Jose one degree shy of breaking records.
The sunshine will return on Saturday, but isn’t expected to stick around for the entire weekend. Rain is set to arrive Sunday in time for the return of Thanksgiving weekend travelers.
Temperatures in the region were expected to be between 5 and 10 degrees above normal Friday, according to the National Weather Service Bay Area division based in Monterey. Still, that put most cities about 5 to 7 degrees off the record highs for the day.
San Jose reached a high of 74 degrees, falling 1 degree short of the Nov. 24 record set in 1959. As of 5 p.m. Friday, forecasters expected the city to hit 75 degrees on Saturday, which is also one degree shy of the record set in 1959.
Santa Cruz reached a high of 76 degrees, but was far behind the daily record of 82. Oakland reached 66 degrees and temperatures at the San Francisco International Airport hit 69 degrees on Friday.
In downtown San Jose, the sun shined as a gentle breeze blew orange and brown leaves throughout the streets.
While some residents bun-
dled themselves up in jackets and sweaters, others donned shorts, sandals and sunglasses. They rode bikes, carried shopping bags and even grabbed a cold beer or ice cream.
Tyler Heinen, who grew up in San Jose, was eating peanut butter and chocolate ice cream with his friends outside of CREAM on South First Street.
The 29-year-old San Francisco State University student came back to his hometown to visit family during the holidays. The weather, he said, felt more warm than last year’s Thanksgiving weekend.
“I remember wearing more layers and being more bundled up than I am now,” he said.
Wearing a hat and sunglasses, 64-year-old Ralph Simpson was walking his dog — a Coton de Tulear named Cosmo — with his wife Thomasena.
Standing outside a dog park, Simpson said it’s been one of the warmest Fridays after Thanksgiving he’s experienced.
“It’s was particularly warm even the last couple of nights. Sometimes we’ll walk the dog at night and usually when the sun goes down, it gets noticeably nippy, but it hasn’t been,” he said.
It feels somewhat bizarre to have this type of weather this late in the year, the San Jose resident said. The rose bushes in their garden have all these buds on them.
“I’m a full believer in global warming and I think the long term trend, even this year, it’s been much warmer than it has been,” he said.
All of that November heat will taper off rapidly into the weekend, and by the early-morning hours Sunday, a high-pressure ridge will be accompanied by rain coming in from the northwest, said meteorologist Drew Peterson said.
“It will be a weak to moderate early-winter storm,” he said.
Still, for Bay Area highways and airports expected to feel the crunch of hundreds of thousands of Thanksgiving travelers returning home, the rain could slow them down.
In the South Bay valleys, up to a third of an inch of rain may fall, and that precipitation forecast rises to 1.25 inches in the Santa Cruz Mountains and as much as 2 inches in the North Bay.