The challenging part of the short-term forecast is all the marine cloud cover at the coast, it is keeping beaches and near coastal valleys cool while inland temps remain warm. This is all taking place under a massive ridge in the upper atmosphere. The key here is that winds are light. Any offshore flow has been too light to push marine clouds away from beaches and afternoon winds have generally been too light to mix marine clouds out significantly.
I think we can expect more of this influence to kick off Friday.
The weekend looks pretty nice in general as the ridge holds into Sunday, maybe temps take a slight dip Sunday as the ridge buckles but that’s about it.
A huge trough of low pressure digs in Monday and temps start to cool. Earlier this week I was calling for showers to begin Tuesday but most modeling slows it just a bit into either a Tuesday PM or Wednesday arrival now. When the trough digs in, some models just show it hanging around for days for dramatically cooler weather with highs in the 60s across the board and on-and-off rain from Wednesday to the close of the week (and possibly longer). Some models like cool air handing around into the 12th. That’s a cold start for May.
So, then the question becomes how much rain we could see. And the answers remain all over the board from over an inch to only scattered light showers falling. Right now splitting the difference would be my call with totals up to .75” but the exact positioning of the trough and duration are significant factors…so this outlook is sure to change. I think higher rain potential is still possible.
