Over the last few days the story has been offshore flow and warm and dry air. It prompted some ties of record temps yesterday in SLO and Santa Barbara in the low 80s.
Inland yesterday was cool thank to cool air pooling and a lot of high clouds, much fewer of those today so inland temps came up while coastal highs came down a bit with less offshore flow.
That reduction of offshore flow continues into Thursday. We'll likely see some marine layer rebound near the coast later Wednesday PM into Thursday. This will keep a little cooling trend going.
The onshore doesn't look to last too long, an "inside slider" (a trough passing us to the east on the CA/NV border) will crank up some northeast flow, but this time it will be of the cooler variety and temps continue to come down on Friday before some weak rebound over the weekend with generally clear to partly cloudy skies.
Thursday into Friday I think a Sundowner wind event for Santa Barbara county looks likely, I'd expect some kind of advisory may be needed and perhaps again Friday into Saturday.
Some ridging into the weekend will keep some slow warming happening with the temperatures.
There are some minor disagreements in the extended forecasts in models but I'd say on the big notes there is agreement: significant rain doesn't look likely. Some models occasionally show light shower activity is possible as cold fronts decay over the region however with the dryness of the air in place I am not biting on that at this point. The American GFS model doesn't like anything thru Christmas. The rainfall deficits continue to grow.
In terms of the ocean, the high surf warning continues for Santa Barbara county into this evening and the high surf warning for the Central Coast will likely become a surf advisory this evening.
