BOOM! Southern California Storm To Bring Needed Heavy Rainfall

A storm system out of the west will hit the forecast area starting Thursday for some of you, with the bulk by Friday harboring all modes of fronts with it so read on for details …

All frontal zone modes will be likely with the system as we start with the warm front on Thursday from San Luis Obispo to San Diego and east through the rest of the forecast area.  The warm front does have some instability and isolated lightning strikes may be possible with it.  Sometimes these warm fronts from storms out of due west can produce isolated thunderstorms even when none are in the forecast … and this looks like it may very well do that as we have some good upper divergence, deep moisture column, and instability.  Targeting this along the warm front is not possible this far out … we could see isolated thunderstorm risk through most of the forecast area as a result.

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You can already see the upper level moisture content with the system with one of the photos uploaded by a reporter with us by clicking here

The bulk of the system hits on Friday.  Over the last couple of days the bulk of the storm has been shifting on each run but we are starting to pin it down now and believe it will hit San Diego with the surface low.  This puts Ventura/Los Angeles, Orange, San Diego, Inland Empire within the strong upper divergence profiles and with a strong jet stream south of the area … this upper divergence will bring large-scale ascent for lifting profiles to bring heavy rainfall to the region … hence the Flood Watch issued on this site.

As stated previously we do have some backing flow along the coast of Orange and San Diego County, which is centering the San Diego region.  This would mean that any thunderstorm or strongly convective cell will produce the risk of waterspouts and thus with this chance we will be monitoring for potential landfalls as small tornadoes … as always with these types of systems.  For now I believe the surface low will be too far south to introduce this risk any further than Orange County but it will continue to be monitored should the surface low shift north.

Snow levels will be mixed with 6,000 feet as a median and pushing up to 7,000 feet on Friday due to the stronger southerly flow for the San Bernardino/Riverside/San Diego Mountain Regions.  This is due to to a thing called warm air advection where we get warmer low level winds out of the south to bump up the snow levels along the immediate front and is the sole reason why forecasts can easily bust on snow amounts with systems like this.

Winter products will be introduced tonight or Thursday morning and upgraded if needed on Thursday evening …

Because the storm system has a deep moisture column, both the high and low deserts will see rainfall from it … in fact all of our forecast region should see rain for it … all the way to the Colorado River Valley and the NV/CA state-line.

We’re approaching short term forecasting now and these articles will only serve as a general outlook.  The app/alert system on the main site will give short term forecast alerts for thunderstorms if needed the morning of each event … Stay tuned …

Southern California Residents get these alerts by Clicking Here …

National Residents Click Here