The Central Coast experienced some mild to warm conditions Friday and Saturday, especially inland. Temperatures started fading quickly, beginning at the beaches and near coastal valleys Saturday and that trend continued Sunday. The exception has been the interior valleys where some mild to warm air lingered.
A trough of low pressure is positioned near California but it will ease out Monday to be replaced by a large amplitude ridge. As the ridge builds there will be locally gusty N-NE winds. There is a wind advisory in place for SW Santa Barbara County Sunday afternoon into 3 am Monday morning for some locally strong N winds 20-30mph with gusts to 45mph.
We will likely see some low clouds at beaches and near coastal valleys later tonight into Monday morning, but breezy conditions will likely clear most of that relatively early Monday.
The marine layer is a tougher call on Tuesday as the ridge of high pressure should start to squish out some of the marine influence, that said I still think some patchy night and morning cloud development is possible at the coast.
The ridge of high-pressure building this week will have the most pronounced influence inland where some mid-80s or better are possible this week.
At the coast, I think some mid-70s and possibly a few low-80s are possible in the coastal valleys after Tuesday.
Temperatures fluctuate a little toward next weekend but we’ll start to see some significant microclimate differences with beaches in the 60s, coastal valleys in the 60s and 70s, and interior temps in the mid-80s.
The deeper extended forecast (the 8-14 day and beyond) is fascinating. Models wipe out the ridge and replace it with a trough. And at times the modeling into mid-May looks downright cold with even the potential for rain systems. It must be said that at this point of the year with fast-changing weather patterns, you don’t want to buy too much of this stock. That said, the Climate Prediction Center is at least buying the cooler-than-average part of it, and I see no reason to disagree with that. As for rain chances, what I’m seeing in modeling has my attention and it is something I plan to keep an eye on.
