Topsy-Turvy Spring Continues

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After a cool and cloudy beginning to the week, a moderate warming tend is in store for the North Bay starting midweek, and continuing through Friday. We may see highs once again in the 80s by Thursday and Friday in places like Sonoma, Santa Rosa, and Sebastopol.

A few showers broke out over far northern California and the Sierra on Tuesday, as a weak but dry trough moved through. Here’s is the satellite view on Wednesday. You can see the trough pushing south through the state. And, out to our west a fairly impressive-looking storm spinning in the Pacific.

It’s that storm that could be interesting this weekend. It is forecast to become a cutoff low, and head east into California by late on Saturday. Or, it may stay off the coast and shoot south. The models don’t agree. Wherever it moves, it will bring showers.

For the North Bay, chances are any showers will be light, but the disturbance will bring clouds and cool temperatures down from the upper 70s to near 80 on Friday, to mainly 60s to low 70s on the weekend.

Here’s the long range outlook for Sunday. Just a few showers around northern California.

If you’re headed to the Sierra for the weekend, you might get some showers depending on the track of the closed low. Speaking of the Sierra, an impressive Terra Modis satellite image (below) snapped on Sunday shows the current snowpack, which for the range as a whole sits at 162% of average. It will be a good year for state reservoirs and water supply.

If you look closely you can also make out some details. Snow still blankets the mountains around Lake Tahoe, and fog can be seen in western Marin county and pouring in through the Cotati Gap. Also a big deck of coastal stratus pushes far inland over the Monterey Bay area.

So in short, our weather continues its topsy-turvy spring pattern. After a cool upcoming weekend with possible showers Sunday, temperatures will likely bounce back up to the low 80s by the middle of next week. But, another weak disturbance will likely bring cooler weather again by the weekend of the 11th.

Spring in Northern California!