The National Weather Service has issued flash flood watch for Santa Lucia Mountains, Los Padres National Forest, Southern Monterey Bay, and Big Sur Coast from late tonight through Tuesday morning. If you plan on traveling through FHL, call 831-386-2513 for up-to-date on info on road conditions.

i will wait on the 1998 excerpt, as this makes my third post today – all important, and necessary.

9:00 am – currently up to .37″, .20″ of that received in the last two hours. I hope to post an entry from my 1998 El Niño Journal this afternoon. I also have a photo album from February of 1998 I am going to try scanning. I have not been successful getting my VHS into DVD format, yet. I may have to find a professional.

Here is one forecast for this week:

“Total rainfall amounts for the week are expected to range
between 3 and 5 inches, with higher amounts in the Santa Lucia
Mountains.

[There will be] periods of moderate to heavy rain Tuesday morning. Rain will turn to scattered showers and the winds will shift out
of the northwest Tuesday afternoon and night. This system will
produce snow across the Sierra Nevada above 4,500 feet with a
foot of new snow possible above 6,000 feet.

Another moderately strong storm system will move into the
Central Coast on the heels of the Tuesday’s system with periods
of moderate to heavy rain and mountain snow during the day
Wednesday….Snow levels with this storm system will be a lower, ranging between 3,000 and 4,000 foot range North to South with another foot of new snow for the high Sierra by Thursday morning.

Rain will turn to scattered rain showers on Thursday into
Friday.

Clearing will develop Saturday into Sunday as high pressure
briefly builds over California. Wet and unsettled weather is
forecast throughout the following week as the long awaited El
Nino type of storm pattern persist.”

From Daniel Swain, of Westher West, where the full report can be found Here, comes this report:

“The area along of just north of the jet stream is a favorable position for storm development and intensification. Usually, California is located near the regional minimum of jet stream strength as it veers northward, but the imminent pattern shift will create a situation in which storms are much more likely to maintain their open-ocean strength or even strengthen as the approach California from the west. There is very strong multi-model support for an extended period (of at least 3 weeks, starting on Sunday) of greatly enhanced storminess and widespread precipitation throughout California.

A powerful and likely El Niño-influenced subtropical jet will develop over and south of California, creating a favorable condition for significant precipitation. (NCEP via tropicaltidbits.com)
A powerful and likely El Niño-influenced subtropical jet will develop over and south of California, creating a favorable condition for significant precipitation. (NCEP via tropicaltidbits.com)
I won’t even attempt to be specific regarding the details of individual storms at this point, since California’s favorable position to the north of a very strong subtropical jet leads to large instability in model solutions due to the much faster growth rate of storm systems than would typically be the case here (and, therefore, we should all expect forecasts to bounce around quite a bit in the coming days). But the screaming message, at this point, is that quite a few storms will affect California over the next 2-3 weeks. Not all of them will be strong, but some of them probably will be. Some may preferentially affect the northern part of the state; others will focus on the far southern region. But it seems very likely at this point that virtually all of California will significant, perhaps heavy, precipitation. Some of these systems may also bring strong winds and even some vigorous convective activity (thunderstorms), but these details are even harder to ascertain more than a few days in advance.”