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Already mild conditions warm further

Posted at 9:12 PM, Jan 19, 2022
and last updated 2022-01-20 00:12:00-05

Thursday is looking to get off to a different start than Wednesday did. Wednesday a good portion of the Central Coast woke up to low clouds and in the interior valleys and for the Santa Barbara Southcoast those clouds lingered into the late morning and early afternoon in a few places holding temps back. This will not be the case Thursday.

As the ridge in the upper atmosphere builds more offshore flow will establish. NE winds 15-25mph are possible late overnight into the morning, under advisory criteria but locally breezy nonetheless. These offshore winds will clean out the skies. The mostly clear conditions will produce some cool overnight lows in the interior in the 30s (but not freezing), at the coast those winds will prop up overnight lows in the 40s for most (but some scattered 50s for lows are possible).

There are essentially two offshore pushes of note: the one Thursday and another later Friday into Saturday. Both look more significant for SoCal but we'll see the winds and the resulting dry conditions and warm afternoon conditions in the upper 60s and lower 70s. Some advisories are already out for the SoCal Santa Ana event and the Saturday event looks stronger, I expect more advisories and local advisories are also possible, just not "as" likely as SoCal.

No rain in sight with the current upper air pattern. The most interesting feature is an "inside slider" later Friday into Saturday which will fuel the second offshore event.

Next week onshore flow looks to drag temps down a little but not a shocking amount.

Long term: some models are suggesting early Feb. shows some rain promise. It should, it is normal for Feb. to be wet. However, at this point the climate models that show some rain also show the re-development of a mid-month ridge. It is a LaNina winter and as January proved you can have a rain dud month even though there have been a few very wet periods. Best to temper expectations. Models often show systems on the tail end of runs, sometimes those opportunities just get kicked down the road. I'm hopeful for early Feb. but after that I'd lean to LaNina swayed conditions after the first week. This is why most forecast don't go past 10 days because beyond 7-10 there are too many variables for exacting forecasts. What you do beyond 7-10 days is look at larger features like LaNina or pressure height anomalies and try to lean toward warm vs cold and wet vs dry probabilities and not exact forecasts.