With New Year’s Eve just days away and no rain in the immediate forecast, the Bay Area is logging one of its driest Decembers on record — a sharp contrast to last year’s deluge that helped propel California out of an extended drought.

If Bay Area skies remain clear through Sunday, San Jose would experience its second driest December since records began in 1893, and San Francisco its fourth driest dating back to 1849, according to the National Weather Service in Monterey.

And while it’s still early — December, January, and February are normally California’s wettest months — forecasters are frankly disappointed with the rainy season so far.

“We seem to have increasing chances of ending the year dry,” said Scott Rowe, a meteorologist with the weather service.

Early Tuesday, one of the models used by meteorologists for extended forecasts had indicated a chance of rain for the Bay Area around New Year’s Eve. However, that model, the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts, made a 180-degree turn overnight and is now indicating a dry start to 2018.

“We were a little bit excited with the European model coming in a little bit wet,” Rowe said. “It flip-flopped on us.”

The next chance of rain in the Bay Area is now Jan. 6-7, said Steve Anderson, a meteorologist with the weather service.

San Francisco and San Jose have the longest set of weather data, going back 168 and 124 years, respectively, and offer the best historical snapshot in the Bay Area. So far this month, San Jose has recorded .07 inches of rain, trailing only 1989 (.04 inches) for the driest December on record. In San Francisco, the .15 inches of rain this month trails the Decembers of 1989 and 1876 (no measurable rain) and 2011 (.14).

San Jose is at 34 percent of its historic rainfall average for this date with 1.57 inches, while San Francisco is at 41 percent with 3.29 inches and Oakland is at 48 percent with 3.22 inches. This time last year, every one of those cities had more than 2.5 times as much rain.

California has largely endured a dry end to 2017, with some areas recording no rainfall since the start of the water season Oct. 1. Rainfall totals for the majority of the southern part of the state are at 5 percent of normal or less, including Los Angeles’ .11 inches (3 percent), San Diego’s .09 (3 percent) and Santa Barbara’s .07 (2 percent).

The Sierra Nevada snowpack now stands at 32 percent of its historic average.

The primary culprit for this stretch of dry weather has been a huge ridge of unusually high atmospheric pressure off the West Coast that has pushed the storm track well north of California, Rowe said. Such ridges and troughs of high and low-pressure air come and go daily around the world and help shape much of its weather. During the drought, one such ridge blocked storms from bringing rain to California to such an extent that it became known as the “ridiculously resilient ridge.”

Earlier this month, federal scientists reported that La Niña conditions in the Pacific Ocean — the cooling of ocean waters near the equator that have historically increased the chances of dry winters in California — are strengthening and should last through the spring.

Despite the historically low rainfall in December, experts say it’s too soon to say California is entering a new period of drought. That said, the U.S. Drought Monitor on Dec. 19 reclassified 44 percent of California as “abnormally dry” — up from 22 percent three months ago.

“Each winter is different from one to the next,” said Rowe, adding there is the potential for Northern California to return to a “wet pattern” in early January.

Despite the slow start to this rainfall season, reservoirs across the state are brimming. They were filled during the record-setting storms last February and March that ended California’s historic five-year drought. With all that water stored, and groundwater tables boosted back in some areas, the chances of water shortages next summer are low.

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“It is still too early to be truly alarmed about the lack of rainfall, but we are certainly watching it closely, and I think it’s appropriate to express some concern,” Doug Carlson, a spokesman for the state Department of Water Resources in Sacramento, told this newspaper earlier this month.

Staff writers Paul Rogers and Jason Green contributed to this report.