February 6, 2024
Summary: After a fairly quiet morning, daytime heating is beginning to spawn showers over the Coast Range with light showers over Madera and Merced Counties. These showers will become more numerous later this afternoon and evening with even the possibility of isolated thunderstorms. Low pressure aloft extends from the Pacific Northwest south/southwestward to off the northern Baja coastline. Doppler radar is indicating heavy precipitation is still occurring from Los Angeles County southward to northern Baja. A tornado has been spotted over San Diego County with a couple of waterspouts off the coasts of Orange and Los Angeles Counties. The trough will remain up and down the west coast through Friday. A secondary low, currently off the Washington coast will slide southward over central California Wednesday night and Thursday morning resulting in at least a chance of showers. The back side of this trough will not clear the Sierra Nevada until Friday night. This will allow high pressure over the eastern Pacific to begin bulging inland, ushering in a dry pattern this weekend. If models are accurate, this dry pattern will last all the way through next weekend, as well. There does seem to be a trend developing which brings another powerful low off the California coast around the 18th and 19th. Of course, this is still a long way off as far as forecast abilities are concerned, but I must admit recent medium range models have done well in forecasting this recent series of storms.
Forecast: Periods of showers through tonight. A chance of isolated thunderstorms this afternoon through the evening hours. a chance of showers Wednesday and Wednesday night. a slight chance of showers Thursday through Friday. Partly cloudy Friday night. mostly clear to occasionally partly cloudy Saturday through Tuesday.
Short Term:
| Madera 41/55/37/54 | Reedley 43/57/38/55 | Dinuba 42/56/38/55 |
| Porterville 43/57/38/55 | Lindsay 43/57/38/54 | Delano 45/57/40/55 |
| Bakersfield 46/57/43/55 | Taft 47/53/45/52 | Arvin 45/56/40/54 |
| Lamont 44/56/40/55 | Pixley 43/55/39/54 | Tulare 42/55/36/55 |
| Woodlake 43/57/38/56 | Hanford 43/57/39/55 | Orosi 42/55/37/55 |
Winds: Winds will be variable to around 12 mph through Friday. Stronger gusts will occur in the vicinity of showers.
Rain: Doppler radar is depicting increasing shower activity over the Coast Range and from Madera County north at this hour. The balloon sounding this morning over Oakland indicating the freezing level is just 5,000 feet and, with pockets of sunshine here and there, more showers will develop during the afternoon and evening hours. Thunderstorms are also possible during the evening. A secondary low is west of Washington and will spread mainly light showers over central California late Wednesday through Thursday morning. I’m not willing to take the chance of showers out of the forecast until after Friday when high pressure will finally set up a dry pattern. That pattern will last through the weekend and most, if not all, of next week. rainfall amounts from this point on will be spotty, ranging from a few hundredths to as much as a half inch where thunderstorms occur.
Frost: The cold trough of low pressure currently overhead will shift eastward beginning Friday. Lows Friday through Monday morning will likely be in the 30s. It is possible that, where skies clear, colder river bottom type locations could dip into the lower 30s with a slight chance of an isolated location or two briefly dipping into the upper 20s. The vast majority of locations will range from 33 to 40. Currently, nothing on models suggests a particularly cold pattern on the horizon.