Snow and near-record lows come to North Bay

A storm that sent temperatures tumbling to near-record lows throughout Sonoma County also brought small amounts of hail, sleet and even snow to the area Monday.

North Bay residents took to social media as the winterlike weather moved through the region. Santa Rosa resident Tim Randall reported a mixture of snow and rain Monday morning in Rohnert Park, while taxi driver Martin DeWitt reported a “quick little” hailstorm in Santa Rosa. He said the hail was “BB-sized” and lasted about a minute.

Jim Coonley, an automotive technician with the CHP in Lake County, sent in video of snow falling at the CHP office in Kelseyville at about 8 a.m.

And in Ukiah, there were reports of a snow/rain mix, according to Matt Mehle, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service.

“This (front) is going to taper off Tuesday and Wednesday,” he said. “Then Wednesday night and Thursday we’ll see another storm approach.”

While Monday’s storm brought below-freezing temperatures to parts of the ?Bay Area, paired with barely measurable amounts of precipitation, Mehle said the storm that’s coming later this week will be the opposite: more rain, and with that a heavier cloud cover, which should keep temperatures back up above freezing.

That storm will linger in the area into Friday, he said, and the North Bay could expect anywhere from a quarter-inch of rain to almost an inch in some areas.

Mehle said temperatures dropped into the upper 20s overnight Sunday throughout the North Bay, with a reading of ?25 degrees in Rohnert Park being the lowest.

Sebastopol got down to 29 degrees, while Guerneville, Windsor and Novato saw temperatures fall to 28 degrees.

Record-breaking temperatures, you might ask? Not quite, Mehle said, but close.

Though data is limited for Sonoma County, only reaching back into the 1990s, Mehle said, Santa Rosa’s overnight low dipped to 28. In 2004, the area got down to 27 degrees.

Elsewhere in the North Bay, the record low for Sunday in San Rafael was ?set in 1894, at 25 degrees.

And in Napa, the record of 27 degrees was set in 1936.

You can reach Staff Writer Christi Warren at 521-5205 or christi.warren@pressdemocrat.com. On Twitter @SeaWarren.