The cold front from last night has moved through the area but not before it deposited anywhere from light amounts of rain inland to more than an inch and 1/2 in the San Luis Obispo county North Coast mountains. Most communities saw roughly 1/4 to half of an inch of rain which was the expectation in the forecast.
With the system moving on our concerns now shift to the higher winds in the Santa Barbara County mountains and the South Coast.
A high wind warning remains in effect for the Santa Barbara County mountains into 1:00 AM Friday for north winds 25 to 35 with gusts up to 60 and 65 mph. There is also a wind advisory for the southwest portion of Santa Barbara County for winds of 20 to 30 mph out of the northwest with gusts to 40 to 50 mph. The other advisory for the Santa Barbara County South Coast is a high surf advisory until 3:00 PM Thursday for surf of four to seven feet with local sets up to 10 feet possible near Point Conception.
The wave story is different for the Central Coast because the surf advisory currently in place for 10 to 15-foot waves we'll continue into Monday as waves are expected to increase to 12 to 18 feet on Friday. Elevated surf is likely into early Monday morning and that high surf advisory expires at 9:00 AM Monday. Dangerous rip currents are the key concern but also activity near jetties. People should be aware of the elevated surf and avoid proximity to it.
These waves will not be as large as the wave event last week which coincided with high tides to produce high surf warnings and coastal flood warnings. There is no coastal flood advisory currently in place for this event.
The forecast looks fairly quiet until we get into the weekend.
There is a trough of low pressure that swings through the region on Friday but I don't think it does anything significant.
A cold front passage later Saturday evening and overnight could produce a few showers but they are unlikely during the daytime hours on Saturday or Sunday so it wouldn't show up as an icon on a 7-day forecast.
Beyond that, a system around the midpoint of next week is still looking likely for more rainfall and lower snow levels. The big headline in the extended forecast is that models are now predicting a major return of active weather around the middle of the month. At this point, there's a little bit of skepticism about that switch since models early yesterday were advertising A relatively quiet period for the middle of the month.
That said, the current suite of models is falling in line with the active outlook with a series of storms between the 14th and 18th which currently looked pretty significant on the modeling. This far out this portion of the forecast could change quite a bit but considering what it's advertising it is worth keeping an eye on the middle of the month.
