‘Yikes’: Bay Area Heat Lingers, Sierra Nevada Snowpack Melting Fast

Although March’s hottest days may be behind us, the unseasonable heat that baked California last week is set to continue, forecasters said Monday. While great for beach goers, the high temperatures threaten to melt the entirety of the state’s dwindling snowpack by the end of the month.

National Weather Service meteorologist Rachel Kennedy wrote in the Bay Area’s daily forecast discussion that while temperatures won’t be as warm as last week’s, they’ll still be about 10 to 15 degrees above normal.

Across inland areas, high temperatures will reach the upper 70s to low 80s through Tuesday, with the 60s to 70s along the coastline. Karleisa Rogacheski, a lead meteorologist with the weather service’s Bay Area office, said temperatures are expected to cool overnight, with morning lows in the upper 40s to mid-50s.

“That’s the story: we are going to bebop around the 70s, it’s going to still be that summer-like pattern,” Rogacheski said.

On Wednesday, a weak cold front is likely to move into the region, dropping temperatures by up to 5 degrees. By Friday, temperatures will likely increase by up to 3 degrees into the weekend.

In the Bay Area, the dropping temperatures could signal “some coastal drizzle,” especially across the North Bay, forecasters wrote.

Temperatures in the Sierra Nevada around Lake Tahoe will be closer to the 60-degree mark, which is still about 10 to 20 degrees above average for this time of year, said Heather Richards, a meteorologist with the weather service’s Reno office.

“We could see ourselves back up into the upper 60s for Tuesday,” Richards said, noting that the warm temperatures are causing “pretty rapid melting.”

Daniel Swain, a climate scientist with UC Agriculture and Natural Resources, said the March heat wave in the state “probably was one of the most singularly extreme heat events in an anomalous sense that we’ve observed in North America in modern history,” during his Monday office hours on YouTube.

Swain said he was worried that this week’s heat would drastically reduce the snowpack, which fell by 6% this weekend. As of Monday, the frozen reservoir sits at just 29% of normal for April 1 — the northern part of the range is at just 11% of its average.

“Yikes,” Swain said. “There will be no meaningful snowpack left in Northern California by April 1.”

There is some slight hope for small amounts of rain at the end of the month or in early April, but the extra heat will likely last through the end of March.

“Models are in agreement that rain will, in fact, return at the beginning of April,” Kennedy wrote.

“It`s better than nothing,” she said, “especially as the rainy season is winding down.”

Last week’s heat wave set all-time high March temperatures across the Bay Area — including 90 degrees in San Francisco on Friday, topping a 150-year-old record. Lake Tahoe also set a record for its hottest March day — at 76 degrees on March 18.