Light rain coming to Southern California, with much colder temps and mountain snow later this week
“My hope is that we get a solid front and a little rain or snow on both sides of those mountains,” said Jonathan Lemire, an climatologist with the National Weather Service’s weather prediction team in Oxnard.
“There’s a ridge of high humidity from the Mexican border to Santa Cruz County on the South Coast, but that’s going to start to break down a bit over the weekend, as it does each summer.”
The wet weather and snow forecast for Southern California continues to get muddier.
Rain and snow showers will affect parts of the Central Valley through Tuesday morning, with the main impacts expected to be around noon. The heaviest rain will be east of Highway 99 and north of Highway 101, near the Sonoma County border.
“But again, it’s only partly dry weather,” Lemire said. “The rest of this is going to be rain and snow at night into the next day or so.”
Lemire expects this morning’s rain to spread southward as the storm moves into the mountains. His estimates are that rain will fall between noon and 2:30 p.m.
“We could still see significant snow in the mountains tonight through Wednesday morning,” he said.
The same conditions will continue Tuesday night and early Wednesday, with the main impact on the lower mountains coming as a snow storm starting around 7 p.m.
“It’s not a blizzard, there’s little or no moisture in it,” Lemire said. “But we know that when there’s a cold snap, you get a few flurries from the cold front, and there might be a little snow, but a lot of it will be very deep wet snow in the mountains.”
The rain and snow could reach the coast by midweek, Lemire said