Late-winter dry spell to continue

After a rather active February in NorCal, the weather has quieted down dramatically. No new precipitation has fallen since last week anywhere in the state, and it does appear that most of the state will stay dry for the foreseeable future. Warm afternoon temperatures will be widespread for the next couple of days and then again by early next week. Some light rain and cooler temperatures will be possible in far NorCal this weekend and again towards the end of next week, but otherwise things should remain mild to unseasonably warm, especially in the south. There are no particularly promising prospects for precipitation–despite the alliteration–for quite some time. The GFS and ECMWF have been indicating a wetter pattern on and off for the past few days, but the trend in both models has been to dry things out in the long term. I do think there will be more precipiation this month, but it may not be particularly significant and we may have another 1-2 weeks to go during the current dry spell. Unless precipitation for the rest of the year falls off a cliff (as it did last year), we may actually be okay for the current water year, though the state on the whole is still running a very large multi-year defecit. Expect a new update when there is actualy some sort of change in the prevailing pattern…