Marin weather shift offers relief from stormy slog

The storm system that blew gusts up to 108 mph and drenched Marin County this week will yield to easier conditions for a while, according to the National Weather Service.

“It looks really nice starting this weekend and going into the first half of next week,” meteorologist Dylan Flynn said.

He said winds are expected to shift from blowing south to north on Friday night, signaling the return of dry air.

“It’ll be nothing as strong as what we just went through this week,” Flynn said.

The next chance of showers will be on New Year’s Day, he said.

In a 48-hour period ending Friday morning, 2.51 inches of rain were recorded near Fairfax, according to the weather agency. Other rainfall totals included Mount Tamalpais with 1.9 inches, Novato with 1.73 inches and San Rafael with 1.51 inches.

Around the region, since the first storms came ashore last weekend, Oakland and San Francisco received more than 4 inches of rain, the weather service reported. The Oakland and Berkeley hills and the Santa Cruz Mountains received between 5 and 8 inches of precipitation.

The highest totals came in the North Bay, where Mount Tamalpais received 15.11 inches over the last week. More than 6 inches fell in Tiburon and Fairfax.

Laine Hendricks, a Marin County spokesperson, said the county had a “Christmas blessing” on Thursday when the storm did not cause the upheaval the staff had expected.

Hendricks said the public works staff responded to a few fallen tree reports and damaged power lines, but there were no major injuries or emergencies. She said a tree struck a home in Novato either Wednesday night or Thursday morning.

Around 9:30 a.m. Friday, about 350 customers had power outages in Marin County, Hendricks said. Most of the outages were reported in West Marin, particularly in the Point Reyes National Seashore.

In all, the storms this week knocked out power to more than 777,000 people across the Pacific Gas & Electric Co. network, and about 41,000 still lacked power late Friday morning, said Paul Moreno, a spokesman for the utility.

Radar indicated a potential water spout in Monterey Bay near Santa Cruz on Christmas Day, Flynn said, though it was not immediately clear whether it came ashore and caused any damage. The weather service also issued a tornado warning over the Santa Cruz Mountains later in the day, though it later appeared unlikely that anything touched down. Formal survey teams have not yet been dispatched.

Perhaps the greatest damage to emerge late this week came at the Lick Observatory on Mount Hamilton, where gusts of up to 114 mph on Christmas Day ripped open the shutter to its 36-inch refractor dome, the center announced Friday. The dislodged shutter, which weighs more than 2 tons, “fell outward onto the roof of the Great Hall, crushing several structural beams,” the center said in a statement.

Though the telescope itself was not damaged, repairs to the facility are expected to take months. Complicating matters is the fact that the telescope’s precision lenses and electrical systems could now be “vulnerable” to precipitation, the observatory said.

“This was a frightening moment for our staff,” said Matthew Shetrone, deputy director of the University of California Observatories. “When the storm broke, everyone was safe, but the spiritual core of our observatory had been damaged.”

In the Sierra, clouds were expected to part beginning Saturday, potentially allowing skiers easier access over Interstate 80 and Highway 50 to take advantage of several feet of fresh snow around Lake Tahoe.

Several ski resorts reported another 2 feet of snow from early Christmas morning to just before dawn on Friday, according to Scott Rowe, another National Weather Service meteorologist. That left Soda Springs with 72 inches of snow so far this week, while Kirkwood reported 59 inches and Bear Valley reported 58 inches. Borreal reported 47 inches of snow this week, as of early Friday morning, while 58 inches of snow had fallen at the summit of Palisades Tahoe.

Accessing those ski resorts remained difficult Friday. Caltrans continued to enforce chain controls on Interstate 80 over Donner Pass and Highway 50 over Echo Summit. Still, the new solid base layer of snow helped the water supply.

Just a week ago, California’s statewide snowpack was at 12% of its seasonal average, with the state’s northern-most peaks registering just 4% of normal snowpack total for that date, according to the California Department of Water Resources. The area that includes Lake Tahoe also was at just 12% of average.

But as Friday, the state stood at 69% of its snowpack average for the day after Christmas, with Northern California coming in at 44% of average and the Central Sierra reaching 73%. More snow was expected to continue falling Friday before easing off this weekend.

“We’ll take any snow at this point in time,” Scott said.

Bay Area News Group contributed to this report.