Good Morning Central Coast!
We made it to Friday! To kick off the morning there are some areas of light fog but the main impact is some mid level clouds across the majority of the Central Coast. There will be some areas with limited morning visibility.
Across the region there are a few storms to the south but the main rain falling from the monsoon is in the Sierras where significant rain is falling.
The rain chances locally are again non-zero but very close to zero.
The monsoon is unstable when the moisture of the air combines with heat, a lot of this happens at higher elevations, and with an easterly flow pattern it is always possible in this scenario to see something fire in the high country of Ventura or even Santa Barbara counties. The SLO hills (mountains) are lower and as a result less likely to produce such activity. That said, I think the Sierra will continue to be the focal point of summer monsoon rain/thunderstorm/lightning activity. Some realignment of the jet stream over the weekend into early next week should shift the most active area of the monsoon back to the east.
The messaging of the forecast is largely unchanged. A little cooler inland today and tomorrow and some warming over the weekend into the middle of next week will place temps a few degrees above averages.
At the beaches and coastal valleys, there isn't much-anticipated change as the marine layer is already a big part of the forecast so it smooths out some of the dynamic nature of the trends. It shows much more inland due to limited marine influence this time of year.
As far as the drought goes.. large portions of the state have seen at least some rain this week, unfortunately that has not made a big impact on the drought monitor this week as measurements for the weekly monitor are taken on Tuesdays.
100% of the state remains in some stage of drought. The week-to-week change was a very very small reduction of exceptional drought (less than 1%), otherwise no changes. Lake levels are again down across the board.
Have a great day Central Coast!
