Pretty unremarkable pattern. The jet stream flow is in the process of flattening into a west-east position between now and Saturday which will mean pretty quiet weather into Saturday. By late Saturday an area of low pressure will increase clouds and some showers are possible as early as late Saturday night for the SLO county north coast, but for most of the area the rain activity looks to start early Sunday.
Most models agree on rain for Sunday-Monday and most models also agree that should be somewhere between .40-1" of rain. What several models do not agree on however is how long the system hangs around.
The American GFS model has the system kicking out by Tuesday or early Tuesday limiting rainfall. The European model (EURO) has the low cutting off and spinning away for several more days essentially doubling the rainfall potential.
While rainfall Sunday into Monday is a high confidence part of the forecast, what happens next would have to be considered low confidence. It should be noted that the EURO model is generally considered to be pretty solid and has showed this lingering potential of the storm in the last 3 runs. At this point if you are dependent on the foreast for the second half of next week, I'd advise staying tuned for updates.
This is actually a pretty cold system for April and highs next week look to be in the 50s or lower 60s, quite a bit below average.
Since today is Thursday a few important updates are out today.
First, our weekly reservoir updates:
You can see not a lot of change took place since last week. A few up, a couple down and several unchanged.
Additionally, the U.S. Drought monitor also updated today. The moderaete drought grew 3% to 43% from last week but the total amount of the state considered dry or worse is still 75%.
