Dry and warm, then some rain?

That cut-off low that plagued SoCal for several days has finally moved out of the picture. The system brought very locally heavy rainfall totals but was, for the most part, very disappointing. Here in San Rafael I recorded 0.21 in. for the month of January, compared to an average of around 10 inches or so (2-5% of normal for the month). NorCal is currently locked in a summerlike stratus pattern with winterlike temperatures (high of 49 today in San Rafael). The stratus should slowly become less pervasive over the weekend and temperatures will climb to 70 in the warmer areas of NorCal and the 80s in SoCal. Next week should start off dry and quite warm. Things become rather murky in the 6-10 day period. The models are currently indicating several very chaotic scenarios, but none bring any significant storms to CA. Some light rain is currently indicated by the GFS around day 8, but that may be suspect as no strong undercutting is forecast to occur. In other words–I’m very skeptical of any stormy solutions without favorable longwave flow patterns. Even the wettest recent GFS model run brings less than 1 inch of precip to CA during the entire 16 day period, which would itself be well below average. We are just going to have to wait and see what develops. If the westerlies don’t break through the ridge in the next 2 weeks, I’m not sure that they will be able to at all for the rest of the wet season…