New Storm to Bring Strong Rains Wednesday

A cold Pacific storm lingered over the San Diego area for a second day today, adding new blankets of frozen white flakes to the mountains and saturating lower elevations with more rainfall before moving out of the region in the late morning.

After arriving Monday, the blustery atmospheric pattern delivered anywhere from about one-tenth of an inch of moisture in some coastal and valley locales to as much as five inches of snow in the East County highlands, according to the National Weather Service.

Over a 24-hour period ending at 3 p.m., the dark clouds dropped 1.05 inches of precipitation in Descanso; 0.78 in Santa Ysabel; 0.7 in Julian; 0.63 in Birch Hill; 0.56 in Rancho Bernardo; 0.55 in Potrero; 0.54 at Palomar Observatory; 0.51 in Escondido, Ramona and Santee; 0.45 in Campo; 0.43 in Dulzura; 0.4 at Brown Field airport; 0.39 at Montgomery Field and in the Granite Hills area of eastern El Cajon; 0.32 in Carlsbad and at Wohlford Dam; 0.3 in Oceanside; and 0.26 in Bonsall and at Lindbergh Field.

Following a brief respite of clear skies, a follow-up storm is expected to arrive on Wednesday and bring more moderately strong rains and snowfall as low as 2,500 feet above sea level through the afternoon and evening.

That spate of inclement weather is expected to end Thursday morning, though accompanying high winds will linger for another 12 hours or so, forecasters said.

—City News Service