SAN JOSE — While last week’s weather may have helped keep residents indoors during the COVID-19 outbreak, this week’s forecast could have the opposite effect.
The next week is likely to bring spring weather with warming temperatures and sunny skies for most of the Bay Area, the National Weather Service reported Sunday.
The last few drops of rain were expected to fall on the area at about dinner time on Sunday before a cold front gives way to warmer weather starting Monday. The spring-like conditions are forecast to run through the workweek, meteorologist Ryan Walbrun said.
Conditions look dry and sunny for the week with temperatures between the mid-60s and mid-70s in San Francisco, Oakland and San Jose, Walbrun said.
The change comes as state officials took further steps to thin crowds at state parks after a Saturday that saw many people emerge from their homes during the shelter-in-place order, violating social-distancing guidelines as they sought recreation.
Rains that soaked the Bay Area over the past month have eased overall water deficits in the region, Walbrun said. A drier-than-normal February could keep those numbers low as March — normally one of the year’s wetter months — ends and the dry season begins.
Walbrun said the area has seen about normal levels of precipitation in March. At San Jose airport Sunday morning the rainfall total was 2.06 inches, just three-tenths under the normal of 2.37 inches.
Oakland’s rain total was lower, a little over an inch drier for the month, Walbrun said.
Both cities have gotten about 40 percent of the water they will get all year, though the likelihood of significant rain isn’t big until the fall, Walburn added.
“It’s been wetter,” Walbrun said. “It also kind of depends where you are in the Bay Area. Some places ended up closer to normal. Down here on the Central Coast we were a lot wetter.”
