The current weather pattern is more of a wind generator than anything else. We have a series of "inside sliders" moving thru The West. An "inside slider" is an area of low pressure that tracks thru eastern California rather than an over-the-water trajectory.
As such, these lows usually don't bring us rain but the change in pressure between the lows and subsequent high pressure wedged in between them creates wind events.
There is a wind advisory for the Santa Barbara County mountains, passes, and canyons thru midnight on Wednesday for an "inside slider" moving thru tonight into Thursday. Another similar slider is on the way Saturday.
Thursday night into Friday could produce some interesting local offshore winds, I think another advisory for the SB county high country is likely and even local Santa Lucia winds could be locally strong, can't rule out some gusts stronger than 40mph, could be advisory strength, we'll have to see when we get into Thursday how things are shaping up.
Other than that, the pattern is not favorable for rain. The American GFS model likes a system around the 3rd with a second showery system around the 11th producing less than .50" of rain however the European mid-range model thinks no rain will fall. Before you write off the "Euro" because it doesn't sound local, it is considered by many to be the better of the two outlooks.
Suffice to say there is low confidence at the moment about March potential. Stay tuned, oftentimes models will migrate toward an agreed-upon solution and the GFS has won these in the past.
We should hope so because the rain shortages are not insignificant and once you get into later March and April you are running out of time to catch up.
