Howling wind blowing a future wet here this early Wednesday on California’s north coast as we get prepared for some heavy rain coming this morning and lasting apparently through the weekend.
We are expected at least two inches of rain just today, and more as the storm plows through. Further south, the rainfall totals will be enormous.

And it’s warm, too, as the vaulted “pineapple express” is carrying the push of the storm front — via CNN: ‘Some are called “Pineapple Expresses,” because they drag moisture over from right around Hawaii. The current one has hosed the West Coast since late November.’

(Illustration found here).

Supposedly, the biggest storm since 2009. Down in Mendocino County, nearly eight inches of rain is expected in the next couple of days, and the storm will also drag huge rainfall totals into the Bay Area, too.

Right now, we’re under a high wind and surf warning — wind gusts up to maybe 35 mph.
From the Sacramento Bee:

The storm has taken the shape of an “atmospheric river,” a condition some experts have described as a kind of horizontal hurricane.
Miles above the Earth, swirling winds of up to 200 mph are funneling into a narrow band, pulling subtropical moisture all the way across the Pacific Ocean.
That funnel will be emptying on California.
“If this continues to intensify, this is going to be a lot more rain than anybody has seen in a long time, because everything is so dry,” said William Patzert, a climatologist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena.
“Any way you look at it, you could say the Pacific Ocean decided to declare war on the California drought this week.”
Because of California’s long drought, and the particular intensity of this atmospheric river, the approaching storm is attracting attention as some kind of monster event.

In the fatal words of Ray Arnold: ‘“Hold on to your butts.”‘