Friday's Bay Area storm brings 30-foot surf and a noon high tide

The National Weather Service expects waves of 20 to 30 feet on Bay Area beaches from late Friday into Saturday, higher at Mavericks, with rain and wind arriving Friday morning. "Any wrong move near the water could lead to your death," meteorologist Joe Merchant told KQED.

This is the season's first real Pacific storm, and it comes in two pieces. Friday brings the rain, gusts and a noon high tide already running more than a foot above the tide tables. Friday night and Saturday bring the swell, a long-period groundswell the weather service forecast at 20 to 25 feet. A second system follows Sunday into Monday.

The place to feel it is Ocean Beach, and the neighborhood behind it is one of the most sought-after in the city. The Outer Sunset ranks second of 92 San Francisco neighborhoods on Houseberry's overall score, and its typical home rose 15 percent in a year to $1.69 million in September 2026. Here is the timing and what to skip.

Friday, hour by hour

The rain arrives Friday morning and peaks from about 10 a.m. to 2 p.m., ABC7 reported, with a chance of thunderstorms in the afternoon. The weather service's forecast discussion put the North Bay at 0.3 to 0.8 inches and the rest of the Bay Area at 0.2 to 0.5 inches, and later forecasts nudged totals up. This is a normal first-storm amount. The problem is timing.

The heaviest rain lands on top of a high tide. San Francisco's gauge is forecast to reach 7.0 feet at 12:49 p.m. Friday, about 1.2 feet above normal, after 7.2-foot highs Wednesday and Thursday. When heavy rain meets a high tide, storm drains along the bay back up because the water has nowhere to go.

Expect water on the same low roads that flooded in late October, which we mapped in our king tide guide: Miller Avenue and Shoreline Highway near Manzanita in Marin and the Mill Valley bike path through Bothin Marsh. If you have to drive Highway 1 through Tam Junction around noon Friday, go early.

The beaches to skip this weekend

All of them on the open coast, Friday night through Sunday. That is the weather service's advice, and we agree with it.

The swell arrives late Friday and peaks Saturday. Long-period waves like these travel farther up the sand than the waves before them, which is how a sneaker wave catches people standing where the last ten waves stopped short. The risk is highest on steep beaches with nowhere to retreat.

• Ocean Beach, from the Cliff House to Sloat Boulevard. The seawall stairs and the sand below the Great Highway are where people get caught.
• Pacifica's Rockaway Beach, Linda Mar and Sharp Park, where the seawalls and rock revetments take direct hits.
• Mavericks and the Half Moon Bay coast. Surfers are preparing for it, and the cliffs above Pillar Point fill with spectators. The weather service's advice is to stay away.
• Point Reyes, Stinson Beach and the Sonoma coast, where waves can run up beaches with steep drop-offs.

If you want to see the surf, watch a live camera. We would not drive to the coast for this one. A 30-foot wave is spectacular for the 20 seconds before the one behind it runs past your feet.

What to do at home before Friday

Clear the gutters and the storm drain in front of your house. The first storm of the season carries a summer's worth of leaves, and a blocked inlet is how a half-inch of rain becomes a flooded garage.

Secure patio furniture and anything loose in the yard before the 30 to 50 mph gusts. Charge phones and a battery pack, since branches and wet soil take down lines on the first storm every year.

Along the Pacifica bluffs, keep an eye on drainage at the top of the slope. Wet soil plus wave action at the toe is the combination that moves cliffs. Pacifica's coastal neighborhoods are less expensive than San Francisco's, and Houseberry data put Rockaway Beach at a typical $1.28 million in September 2026, about $410,000 below the Outer Sunset. Part of that difference is the ocean.

The second storm and the Thanksgiving tides

A second system arrives Sunday into Monday with rain amounts the weather service expects to look like Friday's. The bigger concern comes later. During Thanksgiving week, forecasters say, tides could run more than a foot higher than this week's if southwest winds or low pressure line up, close to a once-in-a-century level for the San Francisco gauge.

Before you buy near the water, check how a neighborhood scores and what it costs against its inland neighbors. Houseberry's San Francisco rankings and the Pacifica rankings put every one side by side.

Sources

• National Weather Service Bay Area forecast discussion
• ABC7 storm timeline
• KQED on the weekend's high surf