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One more warm day before a cooler weekend with a shower chance Sunday

Posted at 5:48 PM, Feb 27, 2020
and last updated 2020-02-27 20:53:00-05

The ridge in the upper atmosphere is holding over California. It is producing surface high pressure and night and morning offshore winds. This drove another day with much above average daytime highs, but missing records. Average daytime highs this time of year are supposed to be in the low to mid-60s.

More high clouds will stream across the area tonight and thru tomorrow. This will hold overnight lows up a bit and not have too much impact on highs tomorrow. The high clouds are sub-tropical ushered into the area with a mid-level SW flow. The surface air is actually on the drier side, this will impact the Sunday storm system as it'll struggle to produce rain over the hundredths of an inch.

The weekend system will also cool us down. Winds already turn back onshore Saturday for cooler temps and Sunday will be breezy out of the NW up to 25mph and highs will struggle in the upper 50s and lower 60s.

After the system departs, Monday is a transition day on temperature but by Tuesday 70s are back.

The longer term outlook still suggests that March could be wet, especially the second week with several potential systems. The details on rain delivery has changed a bit from run to run but a number of models agree on the optimism for more rain in March.

The other big story today is the growing drought across the state of California. Click HERE for more on that.

Locally, February was one of the driest ever. 1964 was similar but in 1953 we had no measurable rain across the whole area. Had it not been for a few hundredths of an inch in SLO and Santa Barbara we'd have tied an unfortunate record. February is statistically our wettest month.

It is impacting our reservoirs. The slow slide there continues. We could use a miracle March.