Dry weather across the entire forecast region starts today with offshore flow developing below passes and canyons. Overnight lows will remain chilly for the most part, especially in the mountain/desert regions through the next few days. Daytime highs will be slightly above the average, but not heatwave level.
The Santa Ana Wind Forecast Center has been opened. It’ll feature maps with captions on what they are for and yes they are clickable.
Gradients will be stronger on Friday night into Saturday morning, which should bring isolated advisory level winds into the prone areas, gustier in the pass zones of course.
Another trough with a chance of showers for early next week is likely, but it isn’t a slam dunk storm system as far as I can see. The ridge developing across the Pacific is gone, however a ridge is consistently developing across the West-Central United States east of here over the Rocky Mountains. This seems to be blocking troughs from entering Southern California and holding the moisture northward into Northern California and the Pacific Northwest through mid-month.
It doesn’t mean much for this season’s El Nino … and long range is still very shaky. As with the 2004-2005 season the long range modeling is going to be in low confidence through the season because of how the jet stream is. One thing is for sure … we need the ridge over the Rocky Mountains to stop developing and blocking the storms from reach our region … shoving them into the Pacific Northwest.