Warming Through Mid-Week

Your forecast for Monterey, Santa Cruz, San Benito, and southern Santa Clara Counties…

Warmer weather can be expected over the next couple of days. High pressure building in from the southwest will exert its powerful force over us, compressing the marine layer and heating us up. That, coupled with relatively dry northwesterly flow, will keep marine layer clouds to a minimum. Though flow will generally remain onshore, even coastal temperatures will inch above normal. A trough then passes by into the weekend, reversing the temperature course—for a little while anyway.

AIR QUALITY: Good to Moderate

Overnight: Mostly clear to start, becoming partly cloudy around the bay and nearby valleys by dawn with patchy fog possible. Breezy northwesterly onshore and up-valley winds at times. Lows in the upper 40s to low 50s on the coast and low 40s to upper 40s inland.

Wednesday: Becoming mostly sunny by late morning with a full clear-out expected for a while in the afternoon. Warmer, with coastal highs in the low 60s to mid 70s—warmest on the north side of the bay where winds will “downslope” off the Santa Cruz Mountains—and low 70s to around 90ºF inland. Northwesterly onshore and up-valley winds will get a bit gusty in the afternoon, especially inland.

Thursday: Patchy morning fog, then sunny and warmer yet with coastal high sin the mid 60s to upper 70s—again, warmest on the north side of the bay—and mid  70s to low 90s inland. Lighter onshore winds, but breezy into the valleys in the afternoon.

Extended: Temperatures will cool slightly on Friday and then again on Saturday with an increase of low clouds on the coast. A warmer, slightly moister air mass will rotate in from the northwest into early next week and along with the building ridge, both lows and highs will head upward. We’ll probably have some low clouds to contend with, however.

*Note: Any alerts from the National Weather Service in Monterey will be noted in italics above. Alerts may be edited for brevity or local clarification (in parenthesis).

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This week's normal temperatures:
--COASTAL CITIES--
LOW: 51ºF
HIGH: 67ºF

--INLAND CITIES--
LOW: 48ºF
HIGH: 78ºF
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-The outlook from the Climate Prediction Center for June 5^th – 11^th calls for the likelihood of ABOVE normal temperatures and ABOVE normal precipitation.

- ENSO (El Niño/La Niña) STATUS: El Niño Advisory, La Niña Watch
- ENSO Forecast: Transition from El Niño to neutral soon and then to La Niña by summer.
-Area drought status: Currently drought-free
-Monterey Bay Sea Surface Temperature* as of May 29^th: 55.4ºF
(Historic May AVG: 55.8ºF)
*average of three buoys