The major storm that soaked Northern California over the past week was one for the record books. A powerful bomb cyclone of rapidly dropping low pressure off British Columbia drew an atmospheric river storm into the state Tuesday night that soaked the Bay Area through early Saturday morning.
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Friday was the wettest day of the 2024 in many areas, including San Francisco, which received 2.97 inches of rain — or 13% of its annual yearly rainfall in one day — and Oakland, which received 2.46 inches in one day. San Jose saw less on Friday, .72 inches, for its wettest day since Feb. 2, when .87 inches fell.
RELATED: Map: See where it’s raining in the Bay Area
Because the bull’s eye of the storm hit in Sonoma County near Guerneville, rainfall totals were higher in the north, and lighter farther south. Santa Rosa saw the wettest three-day period in its recorded weather history back to 1902, with 12.47 inches. That’s 37% of the city’s yearly rainfall average in just three days.
The heavy rains were believed responsible for two deaths, a person found underwater in a car in Guerneville Saturday near Highway 116, and a 60-year-old man found dead Saturday in Piner Creek in Santa Rosa. For much of the rest of the Bay Area it caused hundreds of flight delays at airports, power outages, backed up creeks and flooded roadways, delivering a needed rainfall boost to what had been a sluggish start to the winter rainfall season that began Oct. 1. The storms also dumped several feet of snow across the Sierra, just in time for Lake Tahoe-area ski resorts, which have begun to open for the winter.
Which spots across the Greater Bay Area received the most rain? Places in Sonoma and Marin counties, led by the famously wet, rural wooded hamlet of Venado in northern Sonoma County, along with mountaintops farther south.
Here are totals from the National Weather Service for the 7 days ending Sunday at midnight, in inches:
Venado: 22.97Lake Sonoma: 15.69Santa Rosa: 12.67Mount Tamalpais: 11.53San Anselmo: 11.14San Rafael: 10.45Point Reyes Station: 8.51Ben Lomond: 7.45Napa: 6.90Richmond: 4.41Mount Umunhum: 4.25San Francisco: 3.97Big Sur: 3.54Oakland: 2.73Mount Diablo: 2.43Los Gatos: 1.83Morgan Hill: 1.69Redwood City: 1.52Hayward: 1.50Fremont: 1.23Sunnyvale: 1.22Salinas: 1.10Monterey: .85Mountain View: .83San Jose: .79
With the rain pouring down, Pittsburg’s Jamar Searcy #28 races De La Salle’s Trisshon Wright #32 to the end zone for a second quarter touchdown in the NorCal Open football championship, Friday, Nov. 22, 2024, at Diablo Valley College in Pleasant Hill, Calif. De La Salle won 10-7.(Karl Mondon/Bay Area News Group)