A large ridge of high pressure remains over The West. This is steering the main storm path of the jet stream well to the north. This ridge looks to break down on Friday but unfortunately, there is not a strong system capable of taking advantage of it.
There is an upper-level low that will track east but other than some clouds it doesn't look like rain. In fact, models have reached some agreement about the close of the month and early Feb. that looks mostly dry. There does appear to be a cold and moisture stared system that rolls thru but even if any rain fell it wouldn't be significant.
So we are left with a forecast that doesn't change that much in the short term. Temps for most will remain in the 60s and 70s for highs with the interior dropping into the cold 30s overnight and the coast in the 40s.
We'll see some occasional gusty offshore winds but not as strong as several events in SoCal which are at advisory criteria.
The only advisory for us at the moment is for high surf into later Wednesday evening.
The deep-extended forecast thru Feb. looks to be clarifying a bit around sub-average rainfall, and the concerns would be how much below average it could potentially be.
Again the mid-range models like mostly dry into the first week of Feb. then the longer models suggest we could face a February with a mid-month ridge over The West which would promote more dry weather.
The CFS model suggests that systems into late-Feb. are more likely to be "inside sliders" which are low-pressure centers that track over land rather than over water.
They tend to be windy and cool and dry rather than warm and wet. Now, again this could all change quickly. Long-term modeling is more of an expectation or outlook than a forecast and conditions can change the forecast 180 degrees quickly. But since the current forecast is so slow there is no harm in looking at the set-up at this point. Especially since the second half of winter will determine if this is a decent year or not. Clearly, we've had some extremely wet weeks but also followed up by a real dud of a January. If Feb. is mostly dry and if March were to somehow follow it could entirely erase the early surplus rains for the 21-22 season.
