Plaincast
What the forecast actually says — NWS Area Forecast Discussions, decoded into plain English.
Revised in 5 passages since the 2:17 AM discussion. See every revision.
Rain is expected in most areas tonight and off and on through early Saturday morning. Dry weather is expected the rest of the weekend. Additional rain is likely on Monday and again next Thursday. High temperatures will be mostly in the 60s, except 40s and 50s in the mountains.
Overall, latest models in good synoptic agreement through the short term period. Essentially, there will be several "pulses" of rainfall across the area today through Sunday.
The first "impulse" of rain is currently impacting the area as an upper low continues to take a over water trajectory, heading into northern Baja later this morning. Scattered showers developed last evening and continue across the area this morning. Based on gauge data, rainfall rates have generally been under 0.25 inches/hour, but some local rates around 0.50 inches/hour have been observed. Fortunately, the showers are moving rather quickly, limiting the potential significant hydrologic impact. This shower activity will continue through the morning, before tapering from northwest to southeast this afternoon. Although no lightning has been observed so far, still enough instability to warrant a slight chance of thunderstorms through this morning.
The second "impulse," a more classic cold front, will begin to move into San Luis Obispo county later this afternoon and will sweep southeast across the area tonight/Saturday morning. This front will bring a 3-5 hour period of light to moderate rainfall. Fortunately, the instability looks much less, so any thunderstorm threat is very minimal. Rainfall rates will likely continue to be around 0.25 inches/hour or less with isolated rates around 0.50 inches/hour. By Saturday afternoon, the front will be east of the area and the rainfall threat with it will end.
Overall, rainfall totals through Saturday morning are expected to range between 0.25 and 0.75 inches for most areas. However, there may be isolated totals around 1.00, associated with areas that experience heavier showers or a thunderstorm.
From Saturday afternoon through Sunday evening, dry conditions are expected. However, beginning Sunday night, yet another system will begin to impact the area.
For the extended, the wet and unsettled weather is forecast to continue across the area. The first system will move across the area Monday and Monday night. Behind this system, there will be a chance of showers during the day on Tuesday. However for Wednesday and Thursday, another system will impact the area, bringing additional rainfall. At this time, these two systems look to bring additional beneficial rain to the area. For the first system, totals are currently estimated to be around 0.25 inches or less. The second system may bring a bit more rain with current estimates in the 0.25 to 1.00 inch range. Based on forecast snow levels, there could be some light snow accumulations above 6000-6500 feet with both systems.
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Data from the National Weather Service. Translated by Claude. About · For developers & agents · Subscribe: RSS feed for this office · Source on GitHub