Traveling in California ahead of Thanksgiving? Expect rain

After widespread rain across California over the past week — resulting in at least one fatality — weather officials are expecting a reprieve come Thanksgiving.

An atmospheric river storm this week dumped record rain in Northern California, before weakening as it moved down the coast into Southern California. Weather officials say light rain is expected across the region starting Monday and continuing until Tuesday.

“Our biggest concern for this week is people traveling for Thanksgiving,” said Dylan Flynn, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service. “If you’re leaving on Wednesday, you’ll have better odds of staying dry.”

Another system rolling through on Monday — aimed more at the Central Coast area — could bring with it maybe 1 to 3 inches of rain, Flynn said. That would essentially be as much rain as the region saw over a six-hour period during the atmospheric river now falling over a two-day period.

“Spreading that out is going to make it much less impactful,” Flynn said. “Overall this is kind of a more typical winter event compared to what we just went through.”

Actual Thanksgiving day and Wednesday, Flynn said, “looks like we’re going to be drying up.”

Flynn called the system’s impact on Northern California this week “unprecedented,” citing a record amount of rainfall in Santa Rosa, with 12.47 inches falling over three days. Flynn said officials have never seen that much over that length of time going back 120-plus years.

“Statistical analysis shows that that amount of rain in downtown Santa Rosa is only really expected to happen once every thousand years,” he said. “It was extremely unprecedented, we’ve never seen it before, we don’t expect to see it very often at all.”

Flynn said the atmospheric river was unmoving for a couple of days, sitting over the North Bay — with moderate rain for 48 hours straight — before it started moving and impacting the rest of the Bay Area. When the system finally started marching south, it resulted in a flash flood warning in San Francisco, which Flynn called “pretty rare.”

Weather officials also saw the earliest flooding they’ve seen of the Russian River, near Guerneville. That area typically floods in late winter, usually in February, according to Flynn.

Authorities saw at least one fatality of a driver recovered from a car found in floodwaters. According to the Sonoma County Sheriff’s Office, at around 11:30 am Saturday, a bystander called to report a vehicle in the flood waters near Mays Canyon Road and Highway 116. Authorities were able to recover the man from the car, but he was pronounced dead at the scene.

According to Flynn, all the major rivers are below flood stage now, with just a couple creeks that are still flooding.

“The big story is what happened last week and just recovering from that,” he said.

In the L.A. area on Saturday, rainfall totals were mostly under a tenth of an inch, with some mountain areas getting about a quarter of an inch, according to Mike Wofford, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Oxnard.

Wofford said the next chance of rain in the L.A. and Ventura areas is more likely Monday night into Tuesday, with mostly under half an inch expected. Temperatures are expected to range from the low to high 60s, with mostly cloudy skies.

“A little bit of light rain at times, but for us it’s going to be — not normal since most of us just expect it to be sunny and 72 every day — it’ll be different than that, but not be that impactful,” Wofford said. Getting closer to Long Beach and down to Orange County, that rain drops off, with probably less than a quarter inch expected, he said.

The rain is expected to stop after Tuesday, with some potential to resume next weekend.