Eye on wind & warm up next week, Sunday Oct 26th forecast
Beautiful weather for the most part with cooler than normal temperatures as Pacific storms keep the onshore flow in full power. Look for winds to start to pick up from the northwest through the overnight and in to Sunday. A Wind Advisory is in effect for the Gaviota region through early Sunday with gusts above 40 mph possible below passes and canyons. The low clouds and fog will be tricky to forecast as winds will scour out the marine layer for some areas. Patchy dense low lying fog could be present in areas where the winds are absent. Overnight lows will be mostly in the 40's and 50's. Highs on Sunday will be mostly in the 60's and 70's.
Looking ahead, a very active Pacific storm track will keep areas well to our north wet with rain and blustery wind through early next week. Because we are a bit too far south, we get the usual procession of heavy marine layer and then northerly winds with warmer temperatures. For Monday, the winds will likely kick up along the Central Coast first and then spread down through Southern California. Temperatures should be noticeably warmer in our northern areas as the winds turn more offshore and more sunshine gets in. As we head toward Tuesday and Wednesday, the winds will turn more northeast with Santa Lucias and Santa Anas blowing pretty strong. This is where we see the bigger warm up with many areas seeing highs warming well in to the 80's and even possibly 90's. With the offshore wind direction, the compressional heating will be strongest right along the coast and that's where it will be the warmest. This is very typical for our part of the world and equally typical will be monitoring the slow return of the onshore flow which looks to start by late Thursday and in to early Friday. Temperatures by then should drop back in to the 70's for most areas and patchy fog should return as well. The good news is that with early October rainfall, fire danger for now should be moderate, but it is likely that more wind events will follow which can dry out our hills and mountains quickly. Hopefully more rain will return soon, but for now we see little chance through the end of the month.
