Dry Start to New Year for North Bay

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After off and on storms throughout the month of December, forecasts are calling for a dry start to the New Year.

The storm that brought our rain on Sunday is blowing into the Southwest, and high pressure will be building over the West Coast in its wake.

By the 3rd of January, the ridge should be keeping storms to our north.

Although our weather will be mostly dry, the ridge is fairly weak and will be “dirty”, with storms passing to our north bringing clouds and possibly a few showers at times. Here’s the forecast for rain through January 8th. Just a tenth or two for us.

When will the storms return? Well, right now it looks like there could be a change to wetter weather sometime in the 2nd week of January. Perhaps by January 9th or 10th, and continuing for a few days.

Here is the GFS long range showing a system moving through then. But this far ahead, it’s all speculation.

Still, that forecast lines up with the return of a low pressure trough along the West Coast.

For now though, the next 16 days are expected to bring well below normal rain and snow to Northern California as you can see here.

And the CFS long range outlook backs that up. It shows generally lower than normal rain through January.

But wetter weather returning to Northern California in February.

Keep in mind, the CFS outlook is generally considered unreliable beyond a week or so. Having said that, it may give us a first look at a trend toward a dryer January, and wetter February.

We’ll have to wait to see if other models come on board over the next few weeks, or if the CFS flips to a wetter scenerio which is certainly possible.