Good Morning Central Coast!
To kick off the morning, temperatures are on the cool (even cold in the interiors) for the commute. There is also some patchy dense fog that will stick around into the mid morning hours.
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 is already passing through the region. That will continue to bring a couple of light showers maxing out under .10" and there may not be much measurable rainfall for most. 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, several weekend events have already canceled so let's dive into what we can expect.
It will all start with a cold front pushing rain into the region by the morning hours tomorrow, it will start slow and become much more impactful by the evening as the center of the system pushes through.
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 30-40 mph with gusts to 60mph in the interiors and slightly less intense winds by the coasts. That being said even where the winds are less impactful it is time to batten down the hatches ahead of the storm. Due to the expectations of these winds the National Weather Service has issued a High Wind Watch for the SLO and SB County interiors from Saturday mid-day to the overnight hours.
As the front pushes through winds will calm slightly but even with the post-frontal rain winds will be a factor.
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 well past the initial storm pushing through. 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.
Looking into the extended forecast the climate prediction center is expecting the period from Dec. 17th through Dec. 23rd to have above average precipitation through our region. Hopefully we will see some more rain as the month goes on.
Have a great day Central Coast!
