A heatwave is scheduled to return to Southern California starting Thursday with a large ridge of high pressure overhead … lasting into the weekend. Shake and bake time … What’s after that?
We’re not bad today in terms of temperatures but this won’t last. A ridge developing south of Southern California on Wednesday will continue to from through Thursday and Friday … into the weekend. This will be a prolonged several day heat event for the inland and some coastal areas. Some spots such as Costa Mesa and Long Beach are always hotter than predicted so we may introduce them into the heat advisory products from now on when issued.
Widespread 95-105 degree marks are expected in the valley/basin areas of the forecast area. If heading to the theme parks, Disneyland will be 100 over the weekend, along with Knotts, and Magic Mountain will be 102 … Be very careful in that heat when standing in lines.
Where’s the rain?
Well the last one was a cutoff low and I was shaving probabilities off a couple days before it was suppose to hit. So is El Nino dead? Not at all. If November comes around and we don’t have major storm activity driven by only the jet stream (no cutoff lows) … then I would worry. During the 1997/1998 Super El Nino October had a couple smaller storms. By mid-month a ridge of high pressure took control and it seemed as if El Nino effects would be a no show. Then during the first week of November it unleashed itself through March 1998. You see El Nino doesn’t get going till after October, usually around Halloween or after. We are just over a month away from the official start of these big storms.
What about the rest of the month?
The rest of the month is still in swing pattern where a ridge develops south of here and this would cutoff the bottom of the troughs to the west … Where they cutoff determines what we will get. But during the first week of October such a pattern will be possible. If the storm cuts off too far west we get nothing but warm/dry conditions … if along the California Coast we will get a cutoff storm into our forecast region for a bump up in the chance of rain/storm activity.
Into October we start to get larger ridges and troughs and this is the period we’ll watch for Santa Ana Wind Patterns … often happen just before the jet stream locks into El Nino and removes it …
Regardless, the long range is being watched and will be updated every 1-2 days in the member section.