| Day | Date | High/Low | Forecast |
| Fri | 9th | 63/49 | Sunny day. Clear evening. |
| Sat | 10th | 69/51 | Some afternoon high clouds possible; Otherwise, sunny day. Some evening high clouds possible. |
| Sun | 11th | 71/53 | Mostly sunny day with some high clouds. Some evening high clouds. |
| Mon | 12th | 74/55 | Mostly sunny day with some high clouds. Some evening high clouds. |
| Tue | 13th | 77/57 | Sunny day. Clear evening. |
Synopsis
Firstly, to those who read my forecast at the beginning of the week: Apologies if you were caught unprepared by the wet weather Monday evening. Although some computer model forecasts showed some chance of evening showers, but it was not supposed to happen in the L.A Basin. Whatever promoted showers along the Orange/San Diego County, coastal waters earlier that day (mechanism wasn’t clear to me), propagated northwest. Early evening showers (some briefly heavy in intensity) in the San Pedro area moved into the campus area by the 11 PM hour (later spreading into much of the San Fernando Valley). While not significant in terms of rainfall (quarter inch or less), it was nonetheless a big forecast faux pas on my part (should have at least placed a “slight chance” of showers that evening).
Well, off-shore flow developed pretty much as the models predicted earlier this week. Yesterday’s winds were more related to the passage of an “inside slider” type, upper level trough. The peak wind gust at UCLA was 30 mph (noon hour). Upper level winds today shifted to the typical, northeasterly direction. More often than not, the campus area doesn’t experience significant wind (gusts 25 mph or higher) when deep layered winds come out of the northeast (key exception being strong winds over a great depth of the. lower atmosphere…not the case today). Many Santa Ana wind prone areas, especially higher elevation locales, continue to have windy weather this afternoon (Malibu Hills, at 1500 feet elevation, recorded a 49 mph gust at 3 PM…59 mph peak at 6 AM).
All the models predict off-shore flow continuing through most or all of next week. Upper air support for strong winds should slowly diminish over the weekend, but it’s not forecast to entirely fade away in the usual, Santa Ana wind prone areas. The main weather affect for most areas will be a gradual warming trend through the middle of next week (potential for widespread 80 degree weather west of the mountains, including the campus area). If the model consensus holds up, warmer than normal weather should continue into the subsequent, MLK, Jr weekend (cooler than what should occur middle of next week though).
Model consensus isn’t great (for now), but some of the longer range models show a couple of storms affecting the state (including the Southland) on or after the 20th. These wouldn’t be soaking storms, but a return to seasonable, cool weather would be the case. Of course, there are some model solutions keeping the state in a dry weather pattern (warm off-shore flow for a good deal of the time) through at least the 24th.
Next issued forecast/synopsis should be on Monday, 12 January.