Splendid, then perhaps a sprinkle; and a wintery East.

My lord, did you get to feel that warm sunshine on your face today?  I was outside around noon, and it was simply splendid out.  Upper 60s across town.  Calm to offshore flow.  Can't really call it a breeze.  Abundant sunshine.  Tomorrow is a clone, although by late in the day, we could see a slight shift toward an onshore flow.  But man, what a gorgeous set of winter days for Santa Cruz.  And honestly, we don't see much a any change through the coming week.  A weakening storm system approaches Thursday.  It will cause our daytime highs to drop to the lower 60s, and we are still expecting to only see 60F for the weekend.  Also, Thursday night we will see some cloud cover, and perhaps a morning marine layer could develop.  Depends on if that onshore flow develops.  Night time clouds clear out through the weekend.

Someone heard the shutter go.  Steamer Lane, Santa Cruz.

On the east coast, cold air is pouring out of Canada, along with some small storm systems.  My hometown in upstate New York is expecting a low of -3F, along with a few inches of snow, tomorrow night.  And while I do love the snow, I am not too sad I'll have just finished another day of warmth and sun.  Washington DC is expecting highs to hover in the 20s the next few days.  North Florida has a Freeze Watch the next few nights.  You basically need to get as far south as the Everglades to have more warmth than us.  And not much warmer, at that.  So yeah, basically winter is hitting the easter half of the country hard.

Anyway, we will begin to warm again next week.  How much really depends on how the high pressure sets up.  Still a lot of question regarding a pattern change (aka rain) for MLK weekend.  Sure is truth that we need the rain.  So, I'll keep an eye on it.  Although, speaking of need, some good news to share.  Our drought has taken a dent, and the past few runs of the drought monitor has reduced the percentage of the state in Exceptional Drought, including much of the Central Coast, which has dropped to merely Extreme Drought.  So, sure, we still need plenty of rain to return to normal, but at least December has pushed us in the right direction.  And while Extreme things are cool these days, we would love to be just Abnormally Dry, or wetter.

Oh, that sprinkles comment.  Almost forgot to mention that some model runs have few hundredths of an inch of rain falling on us early Friday morning.  So we could squeeze out a bit of water in the local hills.  Perhaps.  And some surf is on its way for Friday as well.  More about that and local conditions tomorrow.  Stay tuned.