From Daniel Swain at the California Weather Blog:
“While much of coastal California has seen quiescent weather in recent days, interior parts of the state have actually been experiencing rather active conditions. Widespread thunderstorms over mountain areas–including the Sierra Nevada, Coast Ranges, and the mountains of Southern California–have brought a remarkably wide variety of conditions over the past 10 days. Somewhat surprisingly, some of these storms have been able to sustain themselves after moving westward into the Central Valley–resulting in a number of very intense lowland thunderstorms that produced quite a bit of large hail, localized flooding, and even a couple of tornados. This pattern–characterized by deep east-to-west flow over California and an unstable atmosphere–has resulted from the persistence of a deep trough over the Great Basin in recent days, with a successive series of low pressure systems sliding southward just east of California.
Thunderstorms are a rather unusual event in coastal California, so it’s not surprising that we don’t often see even a chance of thunderstorms in the forecast in major urban areas for 4 consecutive days. Yet that’s exactly what appears to be in the cards for the rest of the week, courtesy of a slow-moving cut-off low currently approaching California from the west. … ”
To read more from the California Weather Blog, go here: Unsettled weather across California through this weekend, with thunderstorms possible at times
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