March 1, 2023Updated: March 1, 2023 7:05 p.m
The Golden Gate Bridge and Bay Bridge are surrounded by a layer of fog from the Marin Headlands in Sausalito, California on Wednesday, March 2, 2022.
San Francisco Chronicle/Hearst N/San Francisco Chronicle about Gett
Temperatures plummeted in the Bay Area on Wednesday, and it hasn’t been this cold since the Victorian era, according to local weather forecasters.
The temperature in downtown San Francisco was just 39 degrees Wednesday morning, matching previous record lows of March 1 in 1875 and 1966, the Bay Area National Weather Service’s office SFGATE said. Although this is the time of year when cool, dry air typically sweeps through the region, these dramatic temperatures are quite unusual. It’s “a bit extreme as it’s almost record-breaking cold,” Brayden Murdock, an NWS meteorologist, told SFGATE.
Temperatures are expected to drop back into the 30s in several Bay Area cities on March 2nd.
The temperature in San Francisco is expected to hit 39 degrees, just 3 degrees below its March 2, 1896 low. Across the bay, downtown Oakland is likely to hit 37 degrees, 2 degrees off its 1976 record low. In the South Bay, San Jose, is expected to match its 1971 record of 31 degrees, the NWS said.
Passers-by stop to admire the thick fog curling in under the Bay Bridge as seen from a bus stop on Treasure Island in San Francisco on Friday, January 27, 2012.
San Francisco Chronicle/Hearst N/San Francisco Chronicle about Gett
The cold hasn’t spared other regions of California either.
The southern Sacramento Valley, the Carquinez Strait and Delta, and the northern San Joaquin Valley are expected to experience freezing temperatures of between 27 and 32 degrees, according to an urgent message from the National Weather Service March 1. When the region gets that cold, crops can be destroyed and outdoor installations damaged.
For more up-to-date information on weather forecasts and advisories, contact the National Weather Service.
Ariana Bindman is the news reporter at SFGATE. To submit tips, comments or cat videos, please contact her at ariana.bindman@sfgate.com.
