Dry, a shower, then dry, dry, dry…

The West Coast and California in particular remains locked in an incredibly dry mid-winter weather pattern. Arizona will actually see som decent rainfall tomorrow as that system that impacted SoCal earlier in the week with frozen precipitation finally moves to the east. Several more days of dry…mild…and locally windy weather are on tap before a weak low pressure area tries to undercut the ridge once again. It appears that this system will be of similar strength to the one that impacted CA briefly but rather notably in some places (snow in Malibu?) but will have nowhere near the amount of cold air that that low had to work with. Therefore…would expect a weak scattered shower event at best for most areas, and snow levels won’t be particularly low. Storm totals generally 0.10 in or less. After that…looks quite dry for at least another week or so. Individual control runs of the GFS are trying to break down the ridge towards the end of the 16 days period…with wildly differing results. One run brought a moist subtropical jet into CA, while another retrograded another extremely cold polar low westward over CA bringing more snow to sea level and frigid temps. Needless to say…the models are having a very hard time. I would tend to believe the majority of runs that depict a continued dry pattern across the West. Given the tenacity of the current regime, it’s going to take a lot to break it down. It’s going to be the driest January on record in many CA cities, folks…