Some East Coast weather came to the Bay Area this week, with some record-setting rain amounts passing through parts the region while accompanied by some sticky humidity that would be quite familiar to those 3,000 miles away.
But the dry heat is about to make a comeback.
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“By Sunday, we’re going to see much warmer temperatures than we’ve seen this week, and Monday it’s going to be even hotter,” National Weather Service meteorologist Dial Hoang said Wednesday. “And the air is going to be quite a bit drier.”
The forecasts early Wednesday morning indicate temperatures in the hottest places — Concord, Livermore and Morgan Hill — will rise into the low to mid-80s by Sunday and the low-to-mid 90s by Monday. Those projected figures could go up.
It will be a significant uptick following high temperatures of 76, 75 and 75 in those three cities on Wednesday. Still, it felt hotter than that; the humidity ran no lower than 70% throughout the region Wednesday.
That it came on a day when it rained enough for daily records to be set — 0.41 inches fell in San Jose and .11 inches fell in Half Moon Bay, breaking marks from 2003 and 1978, respectively — only reinforced just how unusual a September storm it’s been.
“No question about it,” Hoang said.
The warmer-than-usual storm had a chance to drop a bit more rain Thursday in areas of Marin and Sonoma County but it’s not expected to accumulate, Hoang said. The East Bay and South Bay were not expected to receive a drop.
The underlying reason for the humidity, according to weather experts and the weather service, has been a marine heatwave — a significant increase in ocean temperature. The marine heat wave that the weather service currently is tracking started in May and covers an area from Southern California up past Canada toward the Alaska Gulf.
What it means for the longer-term weather this fall and winter remains to be analyzed. What it meant over the past three nights has meant a dew point in the 60s. The dew point is the temperature at which water vapor condenses into liquid and generally runs in the low 50s for the region this time of year, according to the weather service.
Next comes the drier warm-up, which is expected to last at least through Wednesday of next week.
