The end to a Bay Area dry spell that has lasted nearly a month may be at hand soon, especially if a cold front heading toward the California coast from the Gulf of Alaska descends lower than its original projection, according to the National Weather Service.

If not, the region may need to wait a few extra days.

Either way, the sunny-dry-and-cold pattern of the past month is expected to be bumped for one that is wet, stormy and warmer.

“We are hopeful it will begin to trend that way by Thursday night into Friday,” NWS meteorologist Roger Gass said Wednesday. “It may shift a little north across California and really affect the counties up north. Then we’ll get a second push probably Monday afternoon into Tuesday.”

It will be the second of those two storm systems that’s expected to bring the more intense rainfall, Gass said. That system may drop as much as 1½ to 2 inches of rain to most of the region, with areas of the North Bay possibly seeing much more and the South Bay more likely to see considerably less.

“The first system is gonna focus on Northern California, and less so the Bay Area,” Gass said. “But we can still get some light showers from that one. The second front will push through the trough deeper over the Pacific, and that will allow the rain to get to us.”

Once that second front arrives, the rain will stay for a while. The weather forecast has rain expected to fall for several days into next week, though some of that rain may be extremely light. Meteorologist Brayden Murdock said the concerns that flooding may occur are slim.

“The biggest amounts of rain that we get will probably be into Tuesday morning,” Murdock said. “After that, we’re only going to see moderate rainfall. It will add up, and there may be a few areas in areas of the North Bay where we see it becoming an issue depending on how hard it falls. But some of the water levels are lower and we haven’t had rain in a while. So all these things considered, these rains don’t look to be threatening floods.”

Aside from the North Bay, the Bay Area hasn’t had measurable rain since Jan. 3, according to the weather service. That stretch followed a storm-ridden December.

In the interim, high pressure took hold and frigid air moved in, lowering overnight temperatures mostly into the low 30s — and in some cities the high 20s — for much of the past two weeks.

A freeze warning and frost advisory was in effect again Wednesday morning for the North Bay valleys, the Bay Area interior and the Central Coast, the fifth straight morning and seventh in the past eight they were issued.

Gass said that stretch is likely to end there, thanks to the cloud cover that is expected to build into Thursday as the storm system moves closer.

“The cloud cover made an inland push overnight,” he said, adding that morning lows were about 5-7 degrees warmer on average than the previous three nights. “Most of the Bay Area is under clouds, and that has helped insulate us from the cold temperatures.”