After weeks of monsoon-fueled thunderstorms, wildfires and sweltering heat, “an early season cold front” is expected to bring temperatures down across California this week.
“We’re going to have rapid cooling, with the biggest drop in temperatures tomorrow,” Kristan Lund, a National Weather Service meteorologist in Oxnard, said Monday. “This is one of the biggest cooldowns we’ve seen, especially since June. … This will bring temperatures pretty far below normal.”
While temperatures in parts of inland Southern California hit close to 100 Sunday, Lund said by Wednesday and Thursday the highs in those same areas will struggle to reach into the mid-80s. Daytime highs are forecast to be 10 to 20 degrees below average for this time of year, with coastal areas remaining in the high 60s or low 70s.
A low pressure system dropping across the Pacific Northwest and into California is bringing the “significant cooling trend,” according to weather service forecasters. The cooldown will be felt statewide and is expected to last for much of the week.
Read more: Temps fall across California; no relief from the cold for the Bay Area
In the Bay Area and Northern California, the cold front is bringing with it a chance for light rain and thunderstorms, which has the potential to alleviate some wildfire risk, depending on precipitation totals. Last week, several wildfires ignited across the region, many sparked by lightning.
“In California, widespread soaking rain is likely along North Coast and northern mountains… with at least a modest chance of showers as far south as [San Francisco] Bay Area/Sacramento region,” Daniel Swain, a climate scientist with UCLA, wrote on social media. “This rain will help substantially tamp down fire risk in [Oregon and northwest California], though some existing fires in heavy timber will likely continue burning.”
Significant rainfall isn’t expected in Southern California, but a deep marine layer could bring some coastal drizzling or even some showers Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday morning, Lund said. However, it won’t be enough to mitigate the fire threat and will likely remain under a tenth of an inch.
“We’d need at least a couple inches of rain to pull us out of high fire season, and the vegetation is just so dry right now,” she said.
And though the stretch of cooler temperatures may feel like an end to summer, forecasters warn that likely won’t be the case, especially in the Southland.
“Another heat wave isn’t out of the question,” Lund said. She also pointed out that the most common time for hot, dry Santa Ana winds is during the fall.
So despite a few days of cooler weather, Southern California can expect a slight warming trend to begin Friday into the weekend. And that may continue: through mid-September, temperatures across the state are forecast to be above-average, according to the latest long-range forecasts.
This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.
