Hurricane Swell, with a chance of rain.

Well, turns out the weather around these parts has ben pretty interesting, including an unprecedented system retrograding off of the Sierra and pushing toward the coast.  Lots of talk about the increase intensity an chances of a legitimate El Nino.  I spent the last few weeks with family in Siena, Italy, and barely even took a moment to look at the Santa Cruz weather while I was gone.  I was more interested in figuring out when the Tuscan heat would subside.  Anyway, we are home now and watching the weather.  And I am finally over my jet lag.  Just in time too, as things look to get interesting over the next few days.

San Antimo, in the Tuscan countryside near Montelcino, Italy.

Hurricane Dolores is currently a CAT 2 storm just off the Baja coast and pushing to the NNW.  It looks like we should start seeing some steep SSE swell arriving from the system as early as Saturday evening.  Of more interest, weather wise, if the possibility of a curvature to the north with the remnants of Dolores coming ashore in Southern and Central California.  Some models are suggesting a band of northerly moving thunderstorms that could drop up to an inch of rain through the day on Saturday and into Sunday.  Pockets of storms could stick around through as late as Monday in Santa Cruz.  How cool would that be?  We will need to watch this system and see how it moves.  Tropical storms tracks are notoriously hard to track, so we will really need to watch this hour by hour to see what happens.  Or, just look to the sky.

A return to more normal summer morning fog and afternoon sun as early as Tuesday.  And just a reminder that it is really dry out there, so please be careful.  It is fire season, like no other.