Heavy rainfall filled the sky on Friday but those showers are not expected to carry over into the weekend with forecasts expecting the precipitation to be behind us by Saturday morning. “This is really for the week,” James White, a meteorologist with the Eureka National Weather Servicex, said. “It’s a good burst of rain, probably the single best rainstorm we’ve had for the fall season so far.” White and the National Weather Service expect close to three inches of rain in the Del Norte region by the time the storm ends, which is expected to end late Friday evening. The Humboldt Bay region is only expected to get around just an inch of rain but White added that this is the farthest south-reaching rainstorm of the year. “They’re getting rain down in Mendocino and Lake County. A few tenths of an inch which they hadn’t really seen much this year,” White said. “Except for just a couple days ago. So all told, it’s definitely our first really great widespread rain of the fall season which is always good to see.” The rain isn’t here to stay, with no rain in the forecast next week but is expected to return to the area mid-November. Friday’s rainfall is the largest amount for the area since a surprising storm in August. “We’ve had a couple of little short ones, we had some rain earlier this week around Tuesday which was just a little bit weaker than this and we had a little bit of rain in mid-October that wasn’t quite this strong,” White said. “The last we’ve had at this same magnitude was actually, believe it or not, in late-August, which is pretty unusual for us. It’s unusual for us to get an event like that in August but we did this year, then we had a long dry spell through September and in October we’ve gotten some smaller rain events and this is definitely the biggest one of them so far. For this much rain, it’s been since late-August and if you look before that, you’d have to go all the way back to May.” The rain wasn’t the only severe weather on Friday, with a wind advisory placed over most of Humboldt County, but like the rainfall, that too will be past us by Saturday. Gusts got up to 50-60 miles per hour in peak locations with the gusts around the bay at 30 miles per hour. The wind advisory remains in place until 5 p.m. Friday evening. “Those strong gusts are ongoing at the moment, the very strongest potential has pretty much already passed and it will slowly decline here through the evening,” White said. “Expect those elevated gusts until the early evening today and by late tonight we’ll be definitely winding down.” At this point in the season, it’s unlikely that the rainfall will cause flooding but the large amount of precipitation could create other problems for drivers on the North Coast. “The soil has so much space for it to absorb water still, our flooding impacts are pretty minimal,” White said. “Our normal concerns at this point in the season would be more localize, things like rocks coming down on the road. (Rocks) have been displaced or sat there all summer and the water could kick them onto the road or usually with the early rains we could have a bunch of oils and stuff from summer that can make the roads extra slick. Especially if folks aren’t used to driving in the rain, that’s always a bigger threat earlier in the season and then proper flooding becomes a bigger threat later in the season.” For more up-to-date weather information, go to weather.gov/eka . Dylan McNeill can be reached at 707-441-0526.