Powerful California winds to precede West Coast warmup
A long-awaited break from winter storms for the United States Pacific Coast will be accompanied by a warmup, but gusty winds may trigger power outages and travel problems in at least one state.
Santa Ana winds are unique to Southern California and they’re considered to be dangerous due to their connection to wildfires. Let’s find out how they work.
A major change in the weather pattern has allowed a drying and warming trend in the Northwest that will last into early next week. However, strong winds will buffet parts of California into Friday and could cause some problems, AccuWeather meteorologists warn.
The new pattern marks a temporary end to the onslaught of storms from the Pacific Ocean that have hit the West Coast in multiple rounds this winter.
As the latest storm responsible for rain and mountain snow from Washington to Northern California pushes inland over the West, it will set up a major snowfall to be measured in feet for parts of Colorado into Friday. Northwest of the storm, the jet stream will bulge northward, allowing the drying and warming process to begin.
However, the flow of air at the level where jets fly will be almost from the same wind direction as air currents near the ground. This will allow some powerful gusts from the north and northeast to sweep from the Sierra Nevada, Siskiyous and Coast ranges to the California coast.
Wind gusts can be strong enough to break tree limbs and bring down utility lines. On the highways, strong crosswinds can cause trucks and trailers to flip over. Because much of the vegetation is still moist from a wet winter, the risk of wildfire ignition and rapid spread is low in California.
Winds picked up around the San Francisco Bay Area on Wednesday and were peaking on Thursday with less wind in store on Friday, AccuWeather Senior Meteorologist Heather Zehr said.
The strongest gusts ranging from 50-70 mph will be in the mountains and hills in Northern California, with gusts of 30-50 mph in the Sacramento Valley and the Bay Area at peak.
In Southern California, "Santa Ana winds picked up Wednesday night and were peaking on Thursday with gusts 55-70 mph," Zehr said. The AccuWeather Local StormMax™ wind gust for Southern California with the event is 100 mph.
Sometimes, this setup can lead to a big surge of heat along the California coast, AccuWeather Meteorologist Joseph Bauer said. "But, while temperatures will trend upward with the setup in California, the air will be chilly to start with and will first flow over the snow cover in the mountains," Bauer explained.
High temperatures will trend upward from about 60 early in the week to the mid-70s on Friday around San Francisco. High temperatures will hover in the low 70s in Downtown Los Angeles during the same period. That translates to about 10 degrees above the historical average for San Francisco and a few degrees above average for Los Angeles.
The biggest temperature turnaround will be in the Northwest, where temperatures will rebound 15-25 degrees from the start of the week to the weekend. For example, in Seattle, high temperatures will trend from the upper 40s Monday to within a few degrees of 70 on both days of the weekend. Temperatures may flirt with daily record highs set in 1947 at Seattle-Tacoma International Airport.
Undoubtedly, this will be the most pleasant stretch of weather in terms of dry weather for much of the Northwest region since autumn.
Farther south, there is some potential for part of the Colorado storm to linger over the interior Southwest into this weekend. This setup could allow some moisture to retrograde westward into Southern California in the form of spotty showers. Cloud cover may also cap the upward temperature trend somewhat.
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