As expected the Central Coast had some more scattered showers and brief downpours Tuesday.
Interestingly there were also several cold air funnels spotted by KSBY viewers.
Around the 2pm hour several photos were taken of a funnel cloud near the SLO airport. Another sighting was made earlier around 1pm in Arroyo Grande.
I thought we were looking at “cold air funnels” and sent photos to the National Weather Service. Meteorologist Mike Wofford looked at the photos and confirmed what the photos show are a cold air funnels.
A cold air funnel is a funnel cloud or a small tornado that can form from a thunderstorm or small shower. Cold air funnels are usually harmless, but can cause EF-0 level tornadoes, which can produce winds of up to 85 mph, on rare occasions.
Cold air funnels are very small and are typically not picked up by Doppler radar.
You might ask: What is the difference between a funnel cloud and a tornado? Crucially, a funnel cloud does not reach the earth's surface, at the point it reaches land it becomes a tornado, or if it reaches a body of water it becomes a waterspout.
Today’s shower activity is largely driven by cold air over our heads and the sunshine heating the landscape. When the sun goes down in the evening the activity should diminish.
But, again, we are not done with rain in the forecast. Another surface trough of low pressure moves thru the Central Coast Wednesday afternoon into the evening for another round of moderate rainfall. .25-1.25” is possible with this next disturbance.
Considering the saturation the Central Coast has seen over the last week, new rainfall rates will have to be watched for potential advisories.
The current advisories are for some continued coastal flooding from a combination of the surf and morning high tides. There is also a surf advisory until Friday for west-facing beaches.
Additionally, there is a winter weather advisory for the Santa Barbara County Mountains for snow levels down to 4000ft. However, larger accumulations will be possible only above 5000ft.
The forecast finally dries out Thursday into the coming weekend and temps slowly crawl back to the mid-60s.
