We've been talking about a warm-up for some time and now it's finally here. An upper-level ridge has developed over The West and will continue to hold its position for some time. Interior areas already saw a good amount of warming on Thursday and will continue to warm Friday and Saturday ultimately seeing daytime highs in the lower 90s.
Beaches and near coastal valleys have had a lot of temperature control recently due to night and morning marine layer and breezy onshore afternoon winds. This looks to change soon as an area of low pressure in southeast California we'll start delivering some night and morning offshore flow. It won't be particularly strong but likely strong enough to cause the marine layer to clear earlier.
Beaches should see the lower 70s as early as Friday and some mid-70s or better maybe possible on Saturday before the offshore push weakens a bit on Sunday and Monday cooling temperatures a little bit.
There will still be some patchy night and morning low cloud potential. Coastal valleys will warm more significantly than the beaches with mid-70s potential on Friday and mid-80s potential Saturday. The same weakening offshore flow Sunday and Monday will drop temperatures back into the mid-70s before warming again later next week.
The pattern in the extended forecast still calls for the huge ridge of high pressure to linger. There will be some vacillation in the shape and strength of the Ridge and surface features but generally deeper coastal valleys in the interior look to get warm and stay warm all the way through two weeks. Coastal and beach temperatures will be up and down in the deeper extended forecast based on the amount of marine cloud cover and influence but conditions look to be warmer than what they have been over the last couple of weeks.
We are still looking at the possibility of some scattered to isolated rain and thunderstorms in the 8 to 14-day forecast as the ridge of high pressure will allow some instability to back in from the desert southwest. The climate prediction center is expecting that period to be warmer than average with above-average opportunities for precipitation across the southwest.
