More wind and fire concerns ahead, Monday Jan 6th forecast

An absolutely stunning Winter day with blue skies and light to moderate winds from the north and northwest. Wind advisories have dropped off temporarily for all areas and along the coast, high surf advisories are expected to drop off by next Tuesday. Look for mostly clear skies with light to moderate offshore northeasterly winds. Where the winds are blocked or very weak, patchy dense fog is possible, but should be very limited to just a few areas. Overnight lows will be mostly in the 40's with highs on Monday expected to be mostly in the 60's

Looking ahead, our really mild run of weather can be easily described as beautiful or even perfect. However, it does come at a cost and that is we are now getting very concerned about drought and fire conditions. Southern California is now ranking this as one of the top 10 driest starts to rain season and we don't see any real changes to a very stubborn weather pattern anytime soon. In fact, high pressure will once again build over the region through mid week and bring another very dry and gusty offshore wind event. The Santa Ana for Southern California could be quite strong and even the Central Coast will see a moderate Santa Lucia northeasterly wind. Red Flag Warnings are now in place for portions of Ventura County along with Wind Warnings for Tuesday and at least through Wednesday. Temperatures will warm a little with compressional heating as the air mass to our north is quite chilly. In wind protected areas this means we could see some very chilly overnight lows. As mentioned above, Wind Advisory level winds will bring heightened fire concerns to many areas of Southern California, including Ventura County. Again wind from the north and northeast will be our main weather focus through at least mid week and fire concerns will be front and center through all of next week. Onshore flow hopefully builds through next weekend bringing higher humidity and lessening the fire danger.