Freeze warning upgraded to hard freeze warning for Sacramento. How cold will it get?
Brrr.
Temperatures dropped as low as 35 degrees Tuesday night in Sacramento, and Wednesday night is expected to be even colder.
The National Weather Service has upgraded at least one day of this week’s freeze warning for the Sacramento Valley to a hard freeze warning, effective from 1 a.m. to 9 a.m. Thursday.
Overnight lows could fall to the mid-20s “for a significant portion of the Central Valley for more than 3 hours” early Thursday, the weather service said in a bulletin, urging residents to protect their plants, pipes, pets and more.
Forecasts show the capital city could plunge to 28 degrees late Wednesday or early Thursday, followed by a forecast low of 31 degrees the following night.
Those overnight temperatures could easily break daily records, weather service records show. Sacramento’s all-time low for Feb. 23 is 32 degrees and for Feb. 24 is 31 degrees, each set in 2018. The low for Feb. 25 is 30 degrees, set more than 130 years ago in 1887.
Daytime highs in Sacramento will be in the mid-50s Wednesday and Thursday, warming into the low 60s by the weekend. Gusty winds are also in Wednesday’s forecast, expected to reach around 24 mph near the capital.
The frigid temperatures come amid a cold snap sweeping across most of the U.S. this week.
Sacramento County and the city of Elk Grove opened three total overnight warming centers for homeless residents Tuesday night, which will be open nightly through Friday night. Sacramento will open City Hall as a weather respite center Wednesday and Thursday nights.
Sierra snow and foothill graupel
Anywhere from about 9 inches to a foot-and-a-half of snow fell at summit level in the central Sierra Nevada mountains east of Lake Tahoe on Monday and Tuesday, according to the weather service. A foot fell at the Palisades Tahoe and Heavenly Valley ski resorts on Monday alone.
A few inches fell in the outlying foothills down to about 4,000 feet on Tuesday, including Pollock Pines.
The weather service also said it saw reports of light snow flurries and graupel falling Tuesday as low as 1,000 feet, including the Auburn area.
Snow has mostly moved out of the region as of Wednesday morning, but chain controls remain in place on most Sierra highways, including Highway 50 and Interstate 80.
What about rain in Sacramento?
Sacramento got only very light showers Tuesday night. No rain was recorded downtown, and only “trace” amounts below one-hundredth of an inch dropped at Sacramento Executive Airport, according to the weather service.
That means the city’s streak of no measurable rainfall has extended to 46 days, during what is normally the region’s wet season. The city’s all-time dry streak record for the winter months is 52 days (December 2013 through February 2014), which Sacramento could tie if there’s no measurable rain the rest of this month.
Up until Tuesday, the weather service’s downtown and Sacramento Executive Airport stations had not recorded any rain since Jan. 7 — neither measurable nor trace amounts.
Sacramento’s latest forecasts show a slight chance of rain each night Saturday through Monday.
Some parts of southern Sacramento County did receive measurable rainfall Tuesday night. About 0.17 inches fell in parts of Elk Grove and 0.16 inches near Galt, according to the weather service.
This story was originally published February 23, 2022 at 8:52 AM.
