The Central Coast is on the edge of a strong offshore wind event for SoCal. The strength of this event is waning into early Saturday. Locally we saw some gusty spots but nothing of advisory criteria. I expect some locally gusty winds overnight into early Saturday but where these winds develop, at the strongest they look to be under 25mph. Lighter offshore winds are likely over the weekend but weaker than today and tonight.
These offshore winds dry out the surface air, it produces some cold overnight lows but also mild highs. There is an upper low which looks to track over the Central Coast this weekend but not only is this feature weak and too elevated, there just isn't any low-level moisture for it to work with to produce local rain.
Highs will again be in the 60s and 70s for the weekend but more early low clouds and a spray of high clouds to filter sun in the afternoon.
Not much change early next week either, a little cooler with some onshore flow re-developing.
The mid-range forecast continues to be dry thru the first week of February. Models are in perfect alignment on it.
Climate models suggest a mid-month ridge may continue to produce mild and dry air thru mid-month and possibly to the end of the month.
The key issue here is that with a January rain-dud, if February also is dry we are simply running out of time to build the surplus supply it takes in local lakes and ground storage to get us thru the long, warm and dry summer months. The season got off to a bang but it has been remarkably quiet for a month and the month ahead shows no strong signs of being active. This can change in the blink of an eye but there are no signals for that yet.
