Plaincast
What the forecast actually says — NWS Area Forecast Discussions, decoded into plain English.
Plaincast decodes the National Weather Service's Area Forecast Discussion — the real forecast, written 3 to 4 times a day by the meteorologist on shift — into plain English. The discussion is where a forecaster explains their reasoning: which models disagree, what they are watching, and how confident they are. Below is the current edition for Los Angeles, with its shorthand expanded. The full experience — an AI plain-English summary beside the annotated original — loads with JavaScript, and every one of the 68 forecast offices has its own edition.
Little change in weather conditions is expected through Thursday with temperatures 3-6 degrees above normal. Areas of morning low clouds and fog are possible near the coast as well. A major and long lasting heat wave will begin Friday and last through all of next week at least with with dangerously hot temperatures.
Highs today reflected the northerly offshore winds, with toasty 80s and 90s along the Santa Barbara south coast and for many valleys and interior areas. The Central Coast saw cooler highs in the 60s and 70s. Offshore winds peaked last night, with the offshore LAX- BFL gradient reaching 3.6 mb and gusty Sundowner winds up to 64 mph. The offshore gradient remained around 2 to 3.6 mb through much of the day, leading to plenty of warming for downsloped areas. Expecting this to shift, as gradients shut off and onshore flow returns for tomorrow. As flow weakens, any patchy fog that forms tonight may become dense. Northerly offshore winds are gradually expected to return, along with building high pressure leading to a warming trend into the end of the week.
. A VERY DANGEROUS AND LONG LASTING HEAT WAVE NEXT WEEK AND LIKELY EXTENDING INTO THE SECOND WEEK IN OCTOBER.
Most of the area (except southern LA County) experienced several degrees of warming today as pressure gradients turned briefly and lightly offshore with some breezy north to northeast winds, mainly in the mountains. Onshore gradients will return Wednesday, leading to roughly 5 degrees of cooling as well as areas of low clouds and fog in the morning.
A warming trend will return Thursday but really kick into gear Friday and over the weekend as a long duration high pressure system settles in over the entire West coast. Most of the ensembles also show a light to moderate offshore flow as well which will push the hot temperatures all the way to the coast, especially south of Pt Conception. By Friday Downtown LA and other intermediate coastal areas will warm into the lower 90s, while the valleys heat up to the upper 90s to 105. These are 10-15 degrees above normal. Based on the latest guidance the chances for heat advisories in LA/Ventura Friday are 70-90%. Central Coast areas will not be quite as warm but still at least 5-10 degrees above normal.
This is the plain-text edition, decoded without AI so it loads anywhere. Read the whole Los Angeles discussion at /o/LOX/, see what changed since the last one, or open The National Desk for where the weather is today.
Data from the National Weather Service. Translated by Claude. About · For developers & agents · Subscribe: RSS feed for this office · Source on GitHub