Wet weather returns (again) this week, along with ... sun?
It’s winter in SLO County.
And while we’re not seeing anything close to a polar vortex, we will see chilly temperatures, some rain and possibly snow this week — and after that, no one knows.
The beginning of this week is sunny and dry, but that will change Wednesday evening, according to PG&E meteorologist John Lindsey.
A “frigid” low-pressure system is forecast to produce rain showers into Thursday morning, with rainfall amounts ranging from 0.25 to 0.50 inches, Lindsey said.
Snow levels with this system are expected to be as low as 2,000 feet along the Central Coast, which means we could see snow on some of the mountain peaks, Lindsey said.
Winds with this system are also forecast to produce moderate gale-force to fresh gale-force northwesterly winds and “well below-average” temperatures, Lindsey said.
This week, overnight lows are forecast to hover in the low to mid-30s, with high temperatures in the 50s, according to Lindsey.
On Monday afternoon, the National Weather Service issued a freeze warning for the Central Coast, including the cities of San Luis Obispo, Pismo Beach, Morro Bay, Cambria and San Simeon, that will be in effect from 3 a.m. to 8 a.m. Tuesday morning.
The warning means the agency expects temperatures to range between 29 and 32 degrees for two or more consecutive hours.
“Isolated cold pockets may drop to 28 degrees,” the agency said, urging people to keep vulnerable animals and pets indoors.
The cold weather means warming centers will be open at both the 5Cities Homeless Coalition in Grover Beach and 40 Prado Road in San Luis Obispo on Monday night.
Check in at 40 Prado begins at 6:30 p.m. and pets are allowed. The 5Cities Homeless Coalition’s warming center is at Hillside Church, 1935 Newport Ave. in Grover Beach, the organization said. The organization asks that people arrive at the church no earlier than 5 p.m. and no later than 8 p.m. The warming center’s hotline is 805-710-4330.
Wet weather won’t last long: the rain is expected to clear up on Friday and Saturday, though “areas of patchy fog” could develop in the inland valleys during morning and night, Lindsey said.
A chance of rain is forecast for Sunday “with a continued chance into the following week,” though the forecast models are inconsistent, which makes next week’s weather hard to forecast, Lindsey said.
Lindsey said that the unpredictability has to do with the positioning of the jet stream.
Jet streams are “relatively narrow bands of strong wind in the upper levels of the atmosphere,” according to the National Weather Service. While jet streams usually blow from west to east, the flow can often shift north and south.
“Earlier, the jet stream was coming across the Pacific directly, so it was easy to say yeah, it’ll definitely be wet,” Lindsey said. But now, the jet stream is coming down from the north, blowing over the Yukon and down the West Coast.
“The position makes a big difference with whether we’re going to get rain or not,” Lindsey said. “If it’s over land, there’s no moisture to get ahold of to produce rain, but if it’s over the ocean, there’s a lot more moisture.”
Lindsey said the forecast models keep changing, but the weather does look wet by the beginning of March.
“It’s up in the air, so to speak,” he said.
This story was originally published February 18, 2019 at 2:15 PM.
