It rained hard last night and into today with the wind raging (58 and 71 MPH gusts were reported from the Golden Gate Bridge and Angel Island respectively) as a cold front moved over California. Rain totals in the Bay Area of California were well over an inch.

Of interest for the middle of the week is a strong storm developing today off the coast of California. NOAA’s “Ocean Prediction Center”:1 charts label this storm as “rapidly intensifying” and “developing hurricane force winds” with pressure dropping down around 970 mb (a fairly strong low-pressure reading). Although it looks like the center of this storm will be ridged to the north of the Bay Area, the swell this storm will generate will hit the central California coast head on. Being so close to shore, the swell will have little chance to decay (swells get smaller the further they have to travel), so on Tuesday and Wednesday a west-south-west swell of around 20 feet will arrive on the coast. The weather might not be the best on those days, but the Pacific Ocean will show some of it’s legendary winter power.

Here’s the storm as it’s currently forecast from the Ocean Prediction Center’s charts.

Here’s the “jetstream prediction”:3 for 10 pm PST Monday showing a classic fully-developed, sub-tropical cyclone.

Here’s the “Wave Watch III model”:2 for signficant sea height.

[1(NOAA Ocean Prediction Center homepage)]http://www.opc.ncep.noaa.gov/

[2(Wave Watch III model)]http://facs.scripps.edu/surf/gblpac.html

[3(Jetstream charts)]http://squall.sfsu.edu/crws/jetstream.html