WEEKEND UPDATE: LIVING ON THE EDGE
SHORT TERM
The North Bay will continue to be on the southern edge of a significant moisture stream that remains aimed at the Pacific Northwest. This will give us showers at times through Sunday. The water vapor image Saturday shows the situation nicely.
We’ve so far received anywhere from a few thundredths to three tenths of an inch of rain across the North Bay. So, very light totals.
Showers will fall off and on through Sunday, but rainfall amounts should continue to be light.
High pressure looks to build back in over California on Monday and Tuesday, giving us mostly sunny skies and slight warming. But, just upstream you can see a strong storm headed south.
By Wednesday, the big low pressure center in the image above will drop south, and it looks to be strong enough to displace high pressure off the CA coast. That means moisture should be able to push further south and bring us rain in two bursts from late Wednesday through Friday.
Even so, we’ll continue to be on the southern edge of the moisture stream, but we may pick up around a half inch of additional rain Wednesday and Thursday. Some models show a lot more, but the estimate below is in the middle of the pack.
So a bit wetter than our current storm.
After that we look to dry out again from the 9th through the 12th of December. Then, all models hint at a pattern change.
By the 15th, the long range outlooks bring a low pressure trough to the CA coast. This has been consistently forecast for about a week.
The jet stream is also forecast to dip south around the base of the big low pressure trough, finally pushing moisture our way.
And possibly opening up the pattern to more storms for California as early as the 16th, as the GFS model hints in this long range outlook.
Right now, the models agree that the weather pattern should be wetter for CA in the third week of December.
How wet? We don’t know that yet, but there are hints the wetter period may extend into the last week of December.
We’ll continue to bring you updates as needed. Stay tuned!
Author: newsofthenorthbay
Recent Comments