Fall weather on the central coast is always very dynamic. You can feature warm temperatures one day and cool the next. This upcoming forecast features, some offshore winds, which will drive more cool, overnight, lows, and mild daytime. Highs into the coming weekend. Next week, however, a pattern flip has the potential to bring heavy rainfall to California, including the Central Coast.
Today the Central Coast saw fairly cool, overnight lows and mild afternoon. Highs with ample high clouds, pushing into the area in the early evening. Friday will feature morning offshore winds, but under advisory criteria. There will be enough offshore flow to keep the air fairly dry so we will recover from the cool overnight lows rather quickly.
Afternoons look to be in the 60s at beaches with low 70s in the coastal valleys, interior valleys, and the Southcoast.
Over the weekend I expect temperatures will boost from just a couple of degrees warmer to nearly 10° warmer in the interior driven by a ridge of high-pressure building in over the region. All that changes by the time we get into the middle of next week.
Models indicate a strong and powerful trough of low pressure. This does have the possibility of producing an atmospheric river for California. there are a lot of questions about this portion of the forecast models that have essentially predicted a huge range of potential from nearly 0 range to as much as 6+ inches of rain. the most reliable, mid-range models are somewhat in the middle, giving us more than an inch of potential but even those models are showing variability run to run.
Right now we are expecting an Atmospheric River level 1 (on a scale of 5). An atmospheric river is a combination of winds and moisture, in other words as transport of the kind of fuel you need for prolific rains. Right now this appears to be a forecast to monitor closely. As the system arrival is mid to late next week I expect the details to change but since the potential is high the wise action is to simply stay informed.
