Central Coast lights up on Sunday

News Channel Five Meteorologist Ryan Smithies is watching the weather again on Monday after Sunday’s light show. Soledad and the southern Salinas Valley received the precipitation. We also saw hail in Crazy Horse Canyon near Highway 101.

Here’s the weather discussion from Smithies for Sunday’s interesting weather events and the forecast: So yesterday was an interesting one. The upper level energy and support for widespread rain and thunderstorms was farther south than it was on Saturday, which is why most of us saw sunshine and just a few white puffy clouds. Still, instability remained. As expected we had a couple of thunderstorms develop over the mountains in Central and Southern Monterey County. Between the upper instability, upward forcing from the mountains, and daytime heating leading to warmer high temperatures, a couple of the storms grew to be rather intense relatively speaking for our area. While they stayed below severe criteria, a few cells did drift over Soledad and Gonzales…dumping small hail and putting down several lighting strikes. Of course, the last of the large storms got mighty close to South Salinas around sunset, which sent social media awry with pics and videos of a pink thunderstorm full of lightning. As soon as the sun went down though, things died quickly.

FORECAST: Another upper-level energy feature skirts down the West Coast today very quickly. The bulk of instability and rain looks to stay offshore, but we will see scattered cloud cover, rain showers, and a few embedded thunderstorms this morning and into the afternoon. We are already seeing a few showers move onshore near the Monterey Peninsula. I think today ends up being a less active version of Saturday, but someone could see hail and lightning again – likely over the mountains if it happens. This one is a quick mover.

We clear out pretty quickly this evening and end up with clear skies by tomorrow morning (and chilly temperatures). The rest of the week looks very sunny and gradually warmer each day. We’ll be in the upper 60s to mid 70s by week’s end.