San Diego & Southern California Outlook - February 12-29

Straight To The Point
Southern California will have several chances for rain during the second half of February. This could possibly bring our rain totals up to near normal for the entire month. However, I don't see any heavy-duty rain events on the horizon...just light to moderate stuff here and there.

Isolated showers are possible late tomorrow into early Tuesday. Another round of rain will arrive Wednesday and Wednesday night. A couple showers could pop up on Sunday, but the brunt of the storm will miss us to the east (don't cancel your outdoor plans). We will see a brief break in the action early next week, then the pattern returns for the end of the month.

Temperatures will remain near normal for the rest of this month - mid 60s along the coast, upper 60s inland. The only exception will be a brief warm period early next week.

Technical
Upper level flow will not support any major storms for the immediate future (the rest of this month). Instead, we will see a series of shortwaves diving out of the Gulf of Alaska and into our region. I've labelled them on the map below:

The pattern will briefly erode early next week as a ridge nudges this way. GFS is very aggressive with this warm up, though I tend to side with the more reliable ECMWF. Regardless, the first half of next week looks mainly dry and mild.

This pattern vaguely reminds me of last November, when I speculated that it might return for the end of this winter. Here is an excerpt from my winter outlook written in November:

I expect the pattern to briefly shift and then return later this winter. During that time, we could see the worst snow storms of the season across the Midwest and possibly farther east...depending on the storm track and availability of cold air.

I have to admit: this is not an original idea of mine. I have a colleague who swears up and down that late autumn patterns tend to cycle through the winter. There might actually be some truth in his thinking. In fact, most ensembles are hinting at this pattern persisting through the end of this month. Right now it looks like the storm track will favor heavy snows for the Southern/Mid Rockies and into the Upper Midwest. We'll see if it will shift farther east for the Mid-Atlantic and East Coast.