LOS ANGELES – California is returning to a dry, warmer break in the weather, but that comes with a moderate to strong Santa Ana wind event that could lead to damaging winds gusting 70-90 mph in areas.
The National Weather Service has much of the state in a checkerboard of Wind Advisories and High Wind Watches. They go into effect Wednesday evening through Friday morning.
“Damaging winds could blow down large objects such as trees and power lines,” warned the NWS in the High Wind Watch. “Power outages are possible. Travel could be difficult, especially for high profile vehicles.”
The hardest hit areas are forecast to be across the Inland Empire, San Bernardino and Riverside County mountains and the valleys and passes through coastal mountains.
“Northeast winds 30 to 40 mph with gusts to 75 mph possible,” the NWS office in San Diego posted. “Isolated gusts to around 100 mph near the lower coastal foothills of the Santa Ana Mountains and for the lower coastal foothills near the Cajon Pass.”
The FOX Model showed widespread areas of 50-60 mph gusts across much of Los Angeles and Orange Counties. Wind-prone passes and canyons show up to Category 2-hurricane-force gusts are possible.
Sacramento and the San Francisco Bay Area will get off easy with winds gusting to 50-60 mph, according to the NWS. Death Valley is in for gusts to 70 mph and Yosemite to 65 mph. The ridges across the Sierra Nevada should brace for gusts over 100 mph.
The Los Angeles NWS office expects temperatures to warm across the coast and valleys by 3-6 degrees alone with the warm dry winds. Add that to the sunshine, and temperatures will feel much warmer.
After a soggy start to March with storm after storm, high pressure is finally setting up high in the atmosphere off the coast. This will block any threatening storms. At the same time, a chunk of energy gets separated from the jet stream and parks itself over the Desert Southwest. This is called a cutoff low.
The strong dry winds usually present a high fire risk. The parade of recent storms dropped enough rain to hopefully keep any sparks in check.
The cutoff low finally drifts farther south Friday, allowing the winds to diminish. Lighter offshore winds will continue through the weekend, though, warming daytime highs 5-10 degrees above normal for this time of year.