A large ridge of high pressure has covered The West for weeks, it will weaken later Friday thru the weekend.
An upper low will move across the state but it will not produce rain. An offshore wind event will precede the low moving over the state and that will dry out the air over the Golden State.
Tonight into Friday there is a decent Santa Ana setting up for SoCal and a number of advisories for wind are in place across SoCal but right now it doesn't appear the Central Coast will see advisory level winds. That said, we will see "some" offshore flow.
Tonight at roughly 10-15mph with some locations to roughly 20mph. Friday it looks like 15-25mph offshore winds are likely, especially early but winds will diminish in the afternoon.
That is still enough offshore wind to keep low clouds from developing. Some upper-level clouds may spray over the coast as the upper low draws closer but the net impact on temps doesn't appear to be significant.
A pretty quiet weekend is in order with a cloud sun mix as the upper low moves thru but highs in the 60s and scattered 70s look likely. Early next week high pressure weakens further and temps lose a few more degrees but no rain thru next week. Models thru 240 hours all agree on a dry forecast.
The local level levels are mostly steady week-to-week as is the status of California in the U.S Drought Monitor. 100% of the state is still in drought but the most concerning categories shrunk roughly a month ago after our last significant rains.
There was a glimmer offered by one of the long-range models today. The CFS shows some potential late in Feb., around the 23rh-25th for significant rain.
Now, this is a "way out there" forecast. This signal was not in it yesterday so it is on the lowest level of confidence at this point. The reason it is important is: models generally agree the first chunk of the month looks dry which would continue the January deficit. There is still a small rain season surplus but if we get no rain before the 20th of Feb. it will likely be gone. A late Feb. washer could at least right the ship for the month of Feb. and possibly the season. Again, I'll caution about outlooks this far out. They can change wildly from run to run on computer models and day-to-day as well.
