SPRING PUT ON HOLD

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The latest model runs suggest that winter may not be finished with California just yet.

In the past two days most medium range weather outlooks have flipped from a significant warm up, to a mainly showery and blustery first three weeks of April.

You can see the current inside slider system plunging down into the Great Basin on the weather map, followed by the Monday satellite image. A steep gradient from high to low pressure brought strong winds and cold temperatures throughout Monday.

As the system passes to the east, we will warm up a bit by midweek. But this will be temporary.

By Friday, another low pressure trough is forecast to drop south into California. The models disagree on the details, but a weak to potentially moderate rainstorm is now likely for the North Bay on Friday the 7th.

The European and Canadian models show more rain reaching us. The GFS and ICON models show less. The WPC blended outlook splits the difference. This is potential rain by Saturday. Basically a couple tenths of an inch all the way to a full inch possible in the hills.

You might notice the sharp dividing line, with very litte rain making it south to the Bay Area. This suggests we could be in the bust zone if the storm trends just slightly more to the north in the coming days.

The Friday system may leave lingering showers for Saturday, but this is spring afterall, and the models show high pressure building quickly back in with a quick (but brief) warm up for the 9th, Easter Sunday, and Monday the 10th.

Highs both days may reach the low 70s across much of Northern California.

After that, well, spring may again be on the retreat. The models agree that another trough looks likely along the West Coast by the 13th, potentially bringing more cool, wet weather.

And the warm, dry outlook for mid-April that seemed likely the past few days has suddenly turned cool and showery, at least for Northern California.

There are still indications that after mid-April we may dry out. With the jet stream pulling north and weakening it will certainly be less likely we see a major storm. But it may stay cool for some time.

This is the temperature outlook for April 11th-18th. 5-10 degrees below average over much of the West.