by Dave Hovde, KSBY Meteorologist

The outlook for Thursday night into Saturday afternoon has not changed much, but the thinking for what might happen next week has.

Most of Thursday will feature partly cloudy skies with south winds increasing during the afternoon to about 15mph.  However as night falls the winds will continue to increase with rain on the way around midnight (could be a few hours earlier or later).  Ultimately it is raining before Friday morning and winds will be SE 15-30mph.  .50-1.50″ of rain should fall before the system pulls out Saturday afternoon.  (There likely will be a lull in activity Friday night as the system is in two parts).

Sunday-Monday look dry.

Now here is where the forecast is starting to change.  The computer model run Wednesday night had an interesting new view of next week’s potential.  Prior model runs had several cut-off lows spinning too far west for the Central Coast to see rain, now the model likes those intersecting the Central Coast for rain next Tuesday, Wednesday and Friday.

Weather forecasters don’t like forecasts like this set-up.  Cut-offs are notorious for their hit and miss potential and the fact that the last two model runs came up with different notions on the forecast doesn’t lead to high confidence.  That said, it is not the forecasters option not to issue a forecast.  Based on today’s information I would think there are opportunities for rain next week.  But this is exactly why we hope people watch all the forecasts since weather is highly dynamic and we do alter forecasts with each batch of new data.

It is February and often when we see the most rain, not a time to sleep at the switch.