The mild and dry pattern looks to continue into next week with a ridge of high pressure in The West. There is an "inside slider" low-pressure system to the east later tonight into Saturday. This will help crank up the offshore winds by increasing the pressure gradient in the area and also coupling that with parallel upper airflow. For us on the Central Coast, this will result in 15-25mph offshore winds with higher gusts of 35-45. For Southern California, this is a legit Santa Ana event and some 60-80mph gusts are not out of the question.
All this will produce high temps in the 60s and 70s thru the weekend. Even though the strong offshore winds will be replaced by weaker onshore winds next week temps will still likely stay above average with dry conditions.
Lows overnight will be cold in the wind-sheltered interior and in wind-sheltered valleys in the 30s, and some scattered freezing lows are likely in the interior valleys. Fog and haze are also possible again under the dome of high pressure but should be scattered due to the drier air and the pockets of higher winds.
The debate after that remains about Feb. expectations on rain. Models in my view continue to send mixed messages. Deterministic models try to get something going sometime between the 31st of Jan and Feb 5th but the timing and details keep changing. The CFS (a longer-range model) has flip-flopped 3 days in a row: dry-wet-dry (than average I mean for much of Feb.).
My mind is open to wet conditions but I'd say at this point you have LaNina battling climatology (Feb. is typically the wettest month) and with the inconsistent outlooks I'd have to say that outlook confidence is low (in other words, don't bet on anything yet..wait for more data to agree).
