Much of California was mild and rather balmy today under a fairly thick deck of middle and upper-level subtropical cloudiness. This moisture continues to stream northward from the subtropics on the eastern side of a mildly divergent and rather weak upper low 600 mi. SW of Point Conception. A few light showers/sprinkles are likely in this elevated moisture field, and have been indicated by ship reports. Anything measurable is very unlikely, however. On Friday, a new disturbance moves in to CA from the NW. This one will also be weak but will have more dynamics associated with it and although it will have to act on a limited moist environment (with moisture mostly confined to areas above 750 mb) there could be some isolated to scattered showers and thunderstorms in CA, esp. in the mountains. The best chance will be in the Sierras Fri-Sun, and possibly in the SoCal mountains on Friday, but some elevated convection could pop up just about anywhere in the northern half of the state. Even the mountains east of San Diego could see some cumlionimbi over the next few days. That said…few places will hear any thunder…and even fewer will see any rain. Any thunderstorm that develops south of Santa Barbara will be dry/mostly dry. This could be the first time there are fire starts in CA from dry lightning in early April! What a winter… After this weekend’s very sparse smattering of elevated convective activity, there is some uncertainty regarding next week. A weakening typhoon has been entrained by the Central Pacific jet today, and this is likely to wreak havoc on model forecasts for the next few days until the extra energy/moisture can be properly initialized. There may be some more possibilities for some precipitation next week, even in SoCal, and they’ll probably be higher that the very low chances over the next few days. At least it’s something to watch for on satellite…
