Bay Forecast: Winter in May?

You may ask yourself, “what happened to Spring?” Join the club! As weather forecasters, we are accustomed to seeing the Eastern Pacific ridge of high pressure building back closer to our coast this time of year. Instead, a fairly persistent dip in the polar jet stream is keeping an unusually active pattern aimed in on the central part of the West Coast. Case in point, Monday’s forecast will have a few showers early in the day changing back over to widespread rain for the second half of the day and night hours. Winds may trend briefly gusty as well especially near the coast and higher hilltops where some gusts will be in the 35 mph range. Tuesday looks to be showery with one more smaller system due in Tuesday evening and very early Wednesday morning. Wednesday afternoon through Friday look decent – high may briefly hit the 70s inland those days. Next weekend’s forecast is still in flux – with a cutoff low spinning nearby off the Central California coast. Depending on where it sets up exactly it seems we may be seeing more showers next weekend. One of the longest range models we have available the GFS – Global Forecasting System shows a trough pretty much anchored over the upper West Coast through the 30th! If so, we’d see off/on shower chances for the near future with slightly below average temperatures. Looking for a silver lining? Fire season may be delayed a few more weeks as wetting rains continue and temporary allergy relief from airborne pollen as well. – Rob Mayeda