A cool week looks to stay cool and get wet this weekend. Another storm system is on the way, again in two parts. The first part is a weak cold front that will arrive late Thursday night into Friday morning. This could produce a few light showers. I think any accumulations will be under .10" and there may not be much measurable rainfall. This, however, is not the main event.
Most of Friday, outside of the early sprinkle/shower possibility, will be partly to mostly cloudy.
The rainfall over the weekend looks to be significant. Rain from that system should start in the morning, but the peak of activity will be concentrated around the cold front arrival and transit thru the area later Saturday morning into the early evening.
This front will move from the NW to the SE over the Central Coast.
Rain, heavy rain rates at times, is most likely with the frontal passage but will both precede it and continue after it.
Along with the rainfall, there will also be strong SW winds 15-25mph with gusts to 35mph. Monterey County already has posted advisories relating to the wind potential. Currently, there is no local advisory but it could be posted when this event is closer both in terms of time and distance.
Our forecast remains unchanged of .50-2" of rain, a few recent model runs have backed off a little bit from the high end of the range but the system is not fully in the score of higher resolution models yet. There are other forecasts which shoot a little lower.
The reason the totals contain this much potential is that this system looks to linger. While most of the rain will fall on Saturday, lingering on-and-off showers continue Saturday night all the way into Monday mid-day because the large upper trough lingers in the region.
After the system departs plenty of cool air is left behind and a forecast where highs remain in the 50s to low 60s looks to be the order up for next week. I think next week is dry after this system kicks out Monday but rainfall could return next weekend but models are a bit all over the place in the location and timing of something for next week. Essentially all models see "something" so at this point just something of note for people making travel plans. I will update you when this window becomes more clear.
I wanted to answer some questions about LaNina today as well, and I made this Facebook post on my fanpage. It gets a bit technical but hopefully, it provides some information for people trying to put the early wet part of this season into some context:
The weekly drought and lake level updates are also posted. Lakes are up a bit:
But recent rains didn't do much at all to the U.S. Drought Monitor assessment of the state. 100% of California is still in some category of drought.
