Say 'so long' to the sun — 7 days of rain are on the way to SLO County

The "storm door" will swing wide open again this weekend, ushering in a weather pattern that could bring as much as 4 inches of rain to San Luis Obispo County through next week.

In fact, various online forecasts are showing better than 50 percent chance of rain for seven straight days starting on Saturday.

That's a lot of raincloud emojis on your weather app.

"It's really, really good news and will put a little bit of a dent in the drought, but at this point won't bring us to typical rainfall for this time of the year," said PG&E meteorologist John Lindsey. "This is the driest year we've seen up to this point."

Lindsey said the first sprinkles could show up as early as Friday as a low-pressure system 700 miles southwest of the county moves in. As that system continues northeastward, it will bring winds, increasing clouds and rain late Saturday morning through Sunday morning, Lindsey said.

Total rainfall amounts for that time will range between 1 and 2 inches, he said.

Scattered sprinkles and rain showers will keep the Central Coast damp on Monday and Tuesday before a stronger low-pressure system that produce "significant" rain arrives next Wednesday and Thursday, Lindsey said.

"Unsettled weather with periods of moderate to heavy rain is forecast to continue into the following week as it appears that California's storm door will remain open," Lindsey wrote in an email.

Unfortunately, the rain may simply be too little, too late for this year's season.

"We're way, way behind," Lindsey said. "We'd have to get like 10 inches this month to get back to where we should be, and I just don't see that happening."

Since July 1, Cal Poly has recorded 6.28 inches of rain. A normal amount for Cal Poly to record by this time of year is about 20.32 inches, Lindsey said.

Paso Robles has recorded 5.81 inches of rain over that same period versus a typical average to date of 11.67 inches, Lindsey said.

Nevertheless, the upcoming rainfall should prevent this from being the driest year on record, Lindsey said.

Between Saturday, March 10, and Saturday, March 17, Lindsey said models indicate that the Central Coast will receive between 2 and 4 inches.

The storm forecast for this Saturday also shouldn't present major threats to areas in Santa Barbara County that were scorched by the Thomas Fire.

There is only a 20 percent chance that the storm could exceed a half-inch of rain per hour, which is the threshold for triggering debris flows, the Santa Barbara County Office of Emergency Management said Thursday. So far, the agency does not anticipate any evacuations.

This story was originally published March 8, 2018 at 3:35 PM with the headline "Say 'so long' to the sun — 7 days of rain are on the way to SLO County."