That was nice, eh? More to come.

Right now it looks like that for the current week we will go back and forth between chances of rain.  Yesterday's system came way more onshore than expected.  Rain not only fell along the coast, but in the interior, and the Sierra south of Tahoe received a few inches.  It is still showering down along the Mammoth Crest this morning.  FInally some water for the state.  We need much more.  With a little bit of luck, more is on the way.  Today, Monday should be mostly sunny here in Santa Cruz, with a high in the mid 50s.  The clear sky will drop us into the upper 30s tonight.  More of the same tomorrow.By Wednesday, another system will push through the high pressure.  This time coming from the north.  We should see an increase in clouds, and slightly warmer air.  While, technically, we have a chance of rain by evening, and more so on Thursday, it looks like this one will scrape by to our north.  It will bring in more cold air.  Friday looks sunny, and mid 50s.  Then we see the chance for something more significant.

Speaking of significant, my very unscientific rain gauge in the front yard collected over a half inch of rain from the past few days.  The bulk of that from yesterday.  Personally, I'm not sure what it was like in town yesterday.  I thought about posting up a gut reaction to the heavy cloud cover I saw when I was getting into my car at 4AM on Sunday.  Alas, I was headed up to take a look at the snow, and had not the time.  My apologies.  It sure looked like it was going to rain.  What I can tell you know is that we now have a start to a snow pack.  We were headed back to an area called Super Bowl.  And we were denied, just like the Broncos.  A good portion of our route was just too rocky, but then again, our route was not along a low tide zone.  So, we skinned and boot packed  our way up a couloir and around back to wind exposed bowl.  The skiing was decent, but we found the best snow in wind protected trees.  Coverage is still thin, but the right zones are now skiing very well.  With additional snow this week, things could be really fun next weekend.  The big question is whether we will be seeing sunshine, or dumpage.

There are more than a few groomers open at Kirkwood these days.

A large scale low pressure is developing in eastern Gulf of Alaska.  It will grow and intensify, before starting to move southeast later on Friday.  It will be well to our north to begin, but it is moving towards us.  As of right now it looks like we will see mostly sun Friday evening and into Saturday morning.  Or high pressure will do its best to keep this storm to our north.  Several models are suggesting that it might not be able to stop this one.  Anyway, it is still too far away to tell for sure.  If you are going up to the Sierra this weekend, start being prepared to deal with storm conditions.  Several folks had white knuckles and a real hard time getting home yesterday when a lot more snow fell than expected.  Anyway, chance for heavy rain moving in Saturday night or Sunday.  What makes this one real interesting is the large scale low should stay in place most of next week (10th-15thish), rotating storms into the west coast.  This could spell out a very wet period for us, similar to early December of 2012.  Nothing super epics, say like March of 2012, but significant.  I hope the hose keeps going through the 22nd, as we will be out of town that week, and I hate missing the 70s and sun here in town.

Anyway, sun through Wednesday morning, then clouds with a chance of rain.  Clearing on Friday.  Cool all week.  Clouds maybe developing Saturday, with maybe heavy rain Sunday.  Low Pressure develops in the Gulf of Alaska next week, either driving torrents of rain upon us, or, pumping up our high pressure again, keeping us high and dry.  While I love sun, I pray for that rain to maybe get us a little bit more back on track.