March Heatwave

The Heatwave:

Strong high pressure is building in over the West for the week ahead and into the weekend. That will bring us sunny days and warm temperatures. Highs into the 60s for the lower elevations to near 70 degrees at the base. 50s and 60s for the upper mountain. Light winds through the week.

Next Week:

The last week of March, the long-range models have been showing for a while now that the ridge would weaken, with some showing a shallow trough near the West Coast. The trusty European AI ensemble mean model has been consistently the shallowest with the trough, while other models were a bit deeper.

Most models were showing some precipitation possible. But they are all trending towards the reliable European AI model, which continues to trend towards less of a trough and just a weaker ridge. That would mean even less of a chance for storms to brush us with some light precipitation.

If that trend continues, the only change we may see next week is cooler temperatures, with highs dropping into the 50s for the lower elevations and 40s for the higher elevations. Unfortunately, we were never expecting any significant storms, just a chance for cooler weather and maybe some light precipitation from storms the last week of the month.

Long-Range Outlook:

The longer-range models do show more of a trough near the West Coast near the end of the month, so we will keep an eye on that to see if a storm can dig into the northern Sierra.

They show lower heights and no strong ridging going into April as well, so we should stay out of a big heatwave and continue to have a chance for weak systems. But we need big storms, which are not showing up in the forecasts still as we look out 2+ weeks. Hopefully, that changes.

BA