For an all-to-brief moment as the sun dipped toward the horizon Wednesday, a crack of sky appeared amid the ever-growing gray clouds and lit up the region with a bedazzling sunset. Yet, even as that was happening, the first handful of drops from an anticipated atmospheric river storm were beginning to come down.

Then, in what seemed to be a flash, the dazzling red-and-orange glow was gone, and the night air seemed even darker than usual because of quickly thickening clouds that started leaking more droplets of rain not much later. Before the sun arose again, that leak turned into the downpour that the National Weather Service said is expected to soak most of the region.

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It may not be completely dry again until Sunday.

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