1/4/2020

Good chilly Saturday morning,

The good news is it will warm up as the day goes on. Highs today will be in the upper 60s, unless you are lucky enough to be in Jamaica, it will be 89 degrees.

No I am not there, but my neighbor is and he sent me a picture to share. This is the way to start off the new year....

We will see some high clouds today. This will do nothing more than keep us slightly cooler.

https://www.star.nesdis.noaa.gov/GOES/conus_band.php?sat=G17&band=09&length=12

Sunday a weak system passes through. Doing nothing more than bringing highs to 65 degrees. Sunday night, a wind event begins, these will start out late Sunday night and northwest faces will get a strong wind event. Santa Barbara will feel these first. Then on Monday, shift to the Northeast in Ventura and south.

As far as the first full week of January goes, we will remain dry now, as all models are in agreement through Friday. Saturday, their agreement departs and we will see increasing chances of rain.

As reported yesterday, we will go into the Books to the end of December and go into January with a dry period of greater than 14 days.

Have a great weekend.

Be sure to be listening to this in the background:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kWvbJsB0OBc

Cue "It's Not Unusual" (by Tom Jones), because an extended period of dry weather in the middle of winter isn't unusual for northern and central California. And given, the current medium range models the next chance of significant rain may be another week and a half off.

Based on San Francisco's daily rainfall, over the past 69 rainfall seasons (i.e., July 1 to June 30) there has been a "dry" period in December or January averaging 19 days. For practical purposes a "dry period" here is defined as consecutive dry days with no rain, or consecutive days broken by no more than two non-consecutive intervening days of very light (* i.e., ≤ 0.08 inches) rain].

The shortest dry spell was 8 days which occurred twice, in 1957-58 and again in 1994-95.  Both of these seasons were during El Niño events!  The longest dry spell was 56 days in 2014-2015, when there was 18.19 inches.  All of these dry periods began in December or January with the exception of the 1964-65 period which was 19 days but did not begin until February 6th.

Even the very wet El Niño seasons of 1982-83 and 1997-98 had intervening dry spells and 22 and 17 days respectively.

 

Data available at https://ggweather.com/enso/winter_dry_spells.htm

 

 

 

Season Consecutive        *Dry Days           Begin Date          *Intervening Days/Amount

1950-51                13           17-Dec 

1951-52                12           6-Dec    1/.08

1952-53                13           21-Jan  

1953-54                13           21-Dec  1/.01

1954-55                16           14-Dec 

1955-56                20           28-Jan  

1956-57                33           6-Dec    2/.03

1957-58                8              6-Dec   

1958-59                12           12-Jan  

1959-60                13           15-Dec 

1960-61                36           19-Dec  1/.02

1961-62                21           22-Dec 

1962-63                42           18-Dec 

1963-64                19           25-Dec  2/.08

1964-65                19           6-Feb   

1965-66                21           7-Jan     1/.02

1966-67                30           11-Dec  1/.01

1967-68                23           19-Jan  

1968-69                13           24-Dec 

1969-70                12           26-Dec 

1970-71                29           17-Jan  

1971-72                21           30-Dec 

1972-73                15           24-Dec 

1973-74                11           20-Jan  

1974-75                22           5-Dec    2/.04

1975-76                25           10-Jan  

1976-77                26           13-Jan  

1977-78                16           20-Jan   1/.02

1978-79                15           19-Dec 

1979-80                26           18-Jan  

1980-81                16           5-Dec   

1981-82                12           6-Jan    

1982-83                22           24-Dec 

1983-84                15           31-Dec 

1984-85                11           27-Dec 

1985-86                21           8-Dec   

1986-87                15           7-Jan    

1987-88                28           30-Jan  

1988-89                11           11-Jan  

1989-90                36           26-Nov

1990-91                17           20-Dec 

1991-92                17           8-Jan     1/.04

1992-93                14           22-Jan  

1993-94                20           15-Dec  1/.03

1994-95                8              31-Jan  

1995-96                15           31-Dec  1/.02

1996-97                20           27-Jan   2/.07

1997-98                17           15-Dec  2/.03

1998-99                21           21-Dec  2/.02

1999-00                27           14-Dec  1/.03

2000-01                22           16-Dec  1/.03

2001-02                18           3-Jan     1/.02

2002-03                19           24-Jan  

2003-04                11           10-Dec  1/.04

2004-05                17           9-Dec   

2005-06                14           3-Dec    1/.03

2006-07                12           5-Jan    

2007-08                10           11-Jan  

2008-09                18           3-Jan    

2009-10                12           31-Dec  1/.05

2010-11                14           31-Dec 

2011-12                49           1-Dec   

2012-13                16           7-Jan     1/.01

2013-14                36           12-Dec  2/.08

2014-15                56           21-Dec  1/.07

2015-16                9              25-Dec  2/.06

2016-17                10           23-Dec 

2017-18                13           21-Dec 

2018-19                11           25-Dec