2/23/23

Good Thursday morning, 

Wednesday was interesting little bit of hail open Solvang. And some light showers at the fun is just beginning.

Take a lookup in the mountains you’ll see a light dusting of snow. levels remain low today 1500 to 2500. It will also be very cold today it’s only in the 50s.

Where do I start from here? 

Here is the current radar. You can see that we have scattered showers and more Westerly flow over our area. https://radar.weather.gov/station/KVBX/standard

North Winds are now I’m starting to shift a little bit more Westerly. This is going to increase the chance of rain in our area throughout the day.

There will not be a lot of rain today just scattered showers, but everybody will see it at some point. Tonight winds will shift again and become more southeasterly which will increase the rainfall as the low gets closer to our area.

Friday and particularly Friday night into Saturday we’re going to experience heavy rains.

Good southeast flow will create heavy rains for Santa Barbara, as low pressure moves very slowly down the coast pumping in Pacific moisture. Santa Barbara will see 2 to 5 inches of rain. The mountains of Santa Barbara are 5 to 7 inches.

The snow level will remain low until Friday and then will rise to 4500 feet as the storm Moves in. Rain will be heavy into Saturday. Then the snow level begins to drop again down to around 2000 feet Friday night into Saturday. This should show us lots of white stuff on local mountains when you wake up on Saturday morning.

The blizzard warning will expire Saturday night, but there still could be blowing snow up in the mountains my suggestion is “stay away.”

Sunday it looks like a break in the action that might be a good day for you to go to the snow. But Monday looks like another system will begin to affect us more from Monday night till Wednesday. This is going to be weaker system, but we can still expect another inch of rain. Snow levels will remain low for this next storm. 

It will be interesting to see when the next day that we actually get up to 60° we will have remained in the 50s for more than a week.

 It was interesting to me that the national weather service mentioned the weather from 1989 and one of my clients wrote back about a story that he had with his son I had to share.

 "Oh yeah, the Blizzard of ’89.  I remember it well.  My son, age 20, nearly died.  

He and a friend decided to hike from the back of the San Rafael Range to Santa Barbara.  April, so what could go wrong?  Fortunately, I suggested polypropylene underwear, which he bought as an afterthought.  

 I don’t remember how they got to their starting point.  They climbed as far as Mission Basin (±5,000’) when the snow started in full force. They were snowbound and unable to see to find directions for 24 hours, wrapped around each other in a small tent to share some warmth.  They were able to finish the walk the next day.  I was in the process of calling for helicopters when he called to say he was OK."

 The moral of the story is to stay out of the mountains over the next three days.

Enjoy the fun or hard for you to define it. It will be an interesting 2 1/2 days 

Stay safe indoors and watch the crazy weather from inside your house.  

Jack Martin