3/20/23

Good Monday morning, 

The National weather service was perfect with Sunday's forecast. Most of the Santa Barbara area received 1/10 of an inch or less. With SLO in the 1/4-inch range. 

https://www.wrh.noaa.gov/lox/scripts/getlocal.php?prod=LAXRRMSBA

Today the calm before a much stronger storm arrives tonight. You can see the parent low spinning to the north and the subtropical clouds north of the forecast areas. 

https://zoom.earth/#view=31.9,-135,4.72z/map=live

This will allow us to have a dry day here, but as the spinning low drops south, so does the AR (atmospheric river). Rain will start off lighter overnight then the real Action begins on Tuesday morning. The National weather service has now moved up the heavy rain to Tuesday morning now. This system is going to be different from the last but offers the same result with lots of rain heavy at times. The main difference is the good southerly flow and wind. It will become quite a wind from the south starting Tuesday morning with strong winds along with a period of 3 to 6 hours of heavier rain, likely mid-morning.

Rain rates will be .5 to as much as 1 inch per hour. This will result in 1.5 to 3 inches of rain coastal. 2 to 4 inches in the mountains and 5 inches on the south faces of Montecito. Just look at this colorful map, with lots of watches to come https://www.weather.gov/lox/

This is also a colder storm with snow levels varying from 3500 to 6000 feet. Snow levels will start at 4000 feet climb to 6000 Tuesday and drop to 3500 feet on Tuesday night. How much snow? above 6000 feet is looking at 2 to 4 feet of snow. above 5000 10 to 20 inches, and 4000 2 to 10 inches. 

Wednesday we will see lots of showers due to the colder air. This Wednesday will be wet compared to the last Wednesday due to the cold air and showers. 

Thursday, we dry out again. The good news is we are looking at the first dry weekend in the past 6. Don’t get too excited because chatter is about another storm possible early next week. Don’t count the chickens before they are hatched, the 7-day forecast is still a way out. We trust a 7-day forecast as much as a 2-year-old not getting into trouble. We will focus on the current rainy weather which will only boost our season's rain totals getting us closer to the top of the wettest rain season on record. There is no way we will top the 1998 El Niño year, but #2 is still possible and we are likely to double the normal rainfall for the year. 

Enjoy the rain, you don’t have a choice.

Have a good dry day Monday, lots more rain to start tonight.

Jack Martin