What to expect from Mother Nature this holiday weekend
Things are off to a chilly start with a frost advisory in effect in area
The Thanksgiving holiday will arrive with some frost on the ground and temperatures in the 30s around the Bay Area. The holiday weekend will exit markedly warmer and likely without any travel headaches for fliers.
So said National Weather Service forecasters Wednesday, as the Bay Area remained in a chilly pattern that the weather service said would culminate overnight and into Thanksgiving Day.
“Much of the inland is expected to have a very, very cold night,” meteorologist Gerry Diaz. “As we get into the weekend, we’ll feel a warming trend that will get us back to what our usual seasonal temperatures are.”
A frost advisory was expected to be in effect this morning for much of the Bay Area’s inland areas, including the interior East Bay, the North Bay Valley and the Napa Valley. Temperatures were expected dip as low as 32 degrees in some higherelevation areas, and temperatures elsewhere were expected to hover between 35 and 37 degrees overnight, Diaz said.
Come Friday, those temperatures will start creeping up, he said, as a strong high-pressure system strengthens amid calm winds.
The most severe winds will be in Southern California, where a red-flag warning highlighting dangerous fire conditions was scheduled to remain in effect through Friday. Continuing low humidity also raised the danger of fires spreading quickly, according to the weather service.
Some 200,000 customers in the southern part of the state were under threat of power shut-offs Wednesday as utilities watched the weather conditions closely.
The high-pressure conditions also promised optimum travel conditions, according to the weather service, which said it was tracking no major storms nationally that were affected to slow down air travel.
The Transportation Security Administration expected to screen about 20 million air passengers during the travel period, compared with nearly 26 million in the same period in 2019. On Monday, the TSA screened 2.1 million U.S. air passengers, the fifth consecutive day with checkpoint volume topping 2 million.
The holiday weekend is a test for carriers after a spate of flight cancellations marred travel over the summer. One in 5 Americans is concerned about delays and cancellations, according to a new American Pecans/ YouGov survey.
But with the weather expected to remain calm for Thanksgiving, airlines were sounding confident.
“The reality is that it’s going to be pretty great conditions to fly into and out of the Bay Area,” Diaz said. “And it looks like that everywhere.”
Rain is unlikely for the holiday weekend, but the Bay Area could see some precipitation in early December.
“We have a big ridge of high pressure that’s over us right now, and it’s just not budging anytime soon,” meteorologist Sean Miller said. “As long as it stays there, the rain stays to our north.
There is the most active storm track to our north, and they’ve been getting all the systems and rain, but unfortunately down here, we’ve been high and dry.”
After “starting things off with a bang” with the record-shattering Oct. 24 storm, Miller said the weather has turned “quieter again” in terms of the rain, quelling early hopes that fall storms could put a dent in the ongoing drought.
“Unfortunately, it looks like we’ll be dry through the month,” Miller said. “There was some possibility at the end of the month, but we don’t have a ‘slam dunk’ that will tell us we’ll definitely get some. We’ll have to watch and see.”