The last few days have seen cold starts in the interior with some frost and freeze conditions and the weekend is no exception but the recovery has been pretty solid with highs in the 60s, and some locations flirting with 70. This is possible due to clear skies and dry air.
That is an important element for the weekend with 2 areas of low pressure which will race thru the area later Saturday into Sunday and later Monday into Tuesday. Generally, when we get these lows dropping into the area, you consider rain potential. In this case, the days of offshore flow have dried out the airmass and these lows won't have much to work with. Clouds and some local breeze conditions and cooler temps are likely but not rain (outside of maybe mist with marine clouds which doesn't look all that likely either).
While Saturday's highs recover from the cool lows into the mid-60s for many for highs with perhaps even some scattered low 70s, Sunday and Monday will likely see most highs in the low to mid-60s with some 50s for highs in a few places.
Moving into next week temps look to recover and Wednesday and Thursday could even see some more widespread 70s for highs.
In terms of rainfall, modeling is showing a series of lows heading into the PacNW with some weak and dying cold fronts moving into the Bay Area and even potentially brushing the Central Coast. And while a few showers could take place in the next few weeks, nothing significant (more than .25") looks likely.
The Climate Prediction Center likes drier than average thru the 27th, but temps look to warm a bit to near average.
The .50-2" of rain (with a couple of mountain locations hitting 3") this week, you'd think that it would have dramatically improved the rain season numbers, but it really didn't. Our rain season began on Oct. 1st. Of the major climate sites in the area, only Santa Barbara officially got more than 1" of rain from the Monday-Tuesday storm. Santa Maria was VERY close at .99" and it did push those locations into very minor surplusses for the new rain season. But elsewhere SLO and Paso Robles got a decent rain but are still behind average to date. With no significant rain in the forecast for the next 10 days and possibly more. it looks likely that most if not all of the area will be back into small deficits by the end of the month.
