Major Pacific Storm Nikita is a category five on my one through six scale and is making a run at our forecast area of Southern California in the next day, impacting later Monday and into Tuesday with a two part system. Thomas Fire Impact Countdown Clock Issued. She’ll bring severe thunderstorms, flooding, damaging wind gusts, and Tuesday mountain snow so read on for details …
The system is in the Pacific still and steaming toward the forecast area. The main jet originated from the Northern Pacific and it’ll latch onto an upper level system coming in from the Hawaiian region by tomorrow and merge the two air-masses together to form a highly dynamic storm system.
Timing looks to be set for an impact of the main frontal zone into Vandenberg AFB and San Luis Obispo by 8pm Monday night, Ventura and Kern by 10pm, Los Angeles/OC by 1am and the Inland Empire/San Diego regions by 2-4am Tuesday morning.
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Impacts on the frontal zone with the updated thunderstorm/tornado model suggests that it’ll be the type that strengthens as it heads toward the Ventura Region and continues to strengthen as it hits Los Angeles and Orange County. As the front grabs a hold of Mt. Baldy it’ll be a solid line that will extend down into San Diego and move east from there.
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The thunderstorm model does in fact try to miss San Diego with the better thunderstorm dynamics as of the latest update. Still ,we have a bit of time until the final forecast for this storm but monitoring will continue in the San Diego area for any changes. The most impacted locations for severe thunderstorms will be from Santa Barbara to Orange County with LA/VT County in-between and thunderstorms extending east into some Inland Empire locations too. Given the shear along the front, I’ll maintain tornado dynamics anywhere from Santa Barbara to Orange County and in-between. This front will have damaging wind gusts for all metro areas.
Flood risk is extreme in the Thomas Fire burn area, with high risk for the Inland Empire, Orange, Los Angeles, Santa Barbara, and San Luis Obispo county zones. Model for flood risk pegs Bakersfield and San Diego at moderate risk due to how quick the front passes.
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Frontal Zone Arrival Times For January 8, 2018 – THOMAS FIRE BURN SCAR
Thomas Fire Burn Scar
[wpdevart_countdown text_for_day=”Days” text_for_hour=”Hours” text_for_minut=”Minutes” text_for_second=”Seconds” countdown_end_type=”date” end_date=”9-1-2018 06:00″ start_time=”1479703323″ end_time=”0,1,1″ action_end_time=”show_text” content_position=”left” top_ditance=”10″ bottom_distance=”10″ ]Front Arrived [/wpdevart_countdown]
Wind gusts in the deserts will be strong due to a strong southerly flow, with gusts ranging between 35 and 60 mph along the northern slopes of the High Desert regions, including the Antelope Valley and Oak Hills regions on Monday night through Tuesday morning, with continued gusts in all sectors of the high desert around 30-40 mph on Tuesday.
The snow level is going to be higher than previously thought as the storm looks to be coming in a bit further south now. This further south track will bring warmer warm air advection into the mountains with snow levels pushing up to 9,000 FT during the main swath of the frontal zone. Easily over 1-2 FT of snowfall for areas at that level and above.. in the upper elevation hiking zones to the peaks. The snow level drops at the end of the front to 6,000 FT so if you’re at that level you may see some flakes falling at the very end of the front before it all shuts off.
During the day on Tuesday another round of convection comes in with instability so from San Luis Obispo, Santa Barbara, Ventura, Los Angeles, Orange County, and The Inland Empire zones … you are looking at another round of shower/thunderstorm activity then, earlier for west of LA and evening/night for LA/OC/IE … with it not aiming San Diego at the moment other than passing showers later Tuesday evening/night … Snow level down to 5,000 FT with this one … so snow is expected in the mountains with this one … most of it being in the LA and San Bernardino Mountains… Snow level charts and maps should be updated tomorrow in the premium member section as they are usually updated 24 hours before snow is expected.
What is interesting about the secondary round on Tuesday is it has low level shear and instability as well as a surface low trailing the storms. So from Santa Barbara, Ventura, and Los Angeles County I will be watching the area for a secondary round of tornado dynamics then … so after the first front is over it will only be halfway done… to contend with the secondary round, which should yield more lightning strikes than the first. Could be looking at a light-show in those areas at sundown on Tuesday.
Kern, along the frontal zone overnight on Monday you now have thunderstorm dynamics in the forecast as per my model … so monitoring that area for such… keep it in mind.
We dry out after the system .. however the values for troughs start to show up against after January 19th so we may be looking at another storm window then …
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