Warm Santa Ana winds will dry the landscape a bit this weekend following Monday’s historic and damaging downpours across San Diego County. But the warm-up might be followed by storms capable of dropping 3.5 inches to 6 inches of rain at the coast from Feb. 1 to 9, the National Weather Service said.
“It’s likely the coast will get 0.50 inches to 1 inch of rain next Thursday through Saturday,” said John Suk, meteorologist-in-charge of the agency’s San Diego office. “But we won’t know until about Tuesday if we’ll get a lot more than that.”
Forecasters are concerned that the region could suffer an event similar to Monday’s weather, when the polar jet stream dropped unusually far south and drew extra strength from an atmospheric river — a large plume of moisture out of the subtropics.
This combination produced long periods of super-intense rainfall that had a greater impact than the winds and rain Tropical Storm Hilary generated locally in August.