May 24th California Weather: Next System Approaches!

Added: 2026-05-25

[00:00:00]Hey everybody, Michael Snyder, California weather watch. Today is May 24th and right now we're looking at the visible satellite imagery as of yesterday and as we go through the day yesterday, you'll see we did get some thunderstorm activity right there where the coastal range and the Clamoth range meet. We did have some fire off there.

[00:00:17]We had a few showers across the Sier Nevada. Didn't see any lightning with that activity there, though. We did get a couple thunderstorms across portions of Nevada and right up towards Oregon and the California border there. right in the very tip of northeast Syscue County and then we go through the overnight hours. The lightning goes away and we come back out this morning. Got a pretty potent marine layer up in towards the foothills of Southern California all the way into the coastal range bay area.

[00:00:42]There's a little bit of sunshine trying to peek through there, but a pretty persistent marine layer all the way through northwest California. Also, now we have a system coming our way that's going to come in the form of an upper level closed low that's going to set up right across California and Nevada. So, that's what we're going to be diving into on the forecast here this morning, and we'll take a look at what kind of potential impacts this system will indeed have. In the meantime, here we have elevated fire weather conditions.

[00:01:07]This is for Tuesday and Wednesday, May 27th. Some north winds, gusty 3540. The low relative humidities. So, again, be careful using the outdoor equipment, cigarettes, vehicles on dry grass, and the easier fire starts. It is that time of the year. We're starting to get some fires here across the region. Now, probability of lightning again today.

[00:01:28]This is Sunday for some of the higher terrain there. You can see not super high chances, but there is the threat again here today. And then we've got some more active fun stuff through the extended forecast. I'm going to show you starting right now. So, looking at the European model, this is 500 millibars, approximately 18,000 ft up in the atmosphere. It does a good job of showing you any troughs that may be on our way. And you can see this strong system across the Gulf of Alaska has eyes on the Pacific Northwest and eventually that is going to drop down towards Nevada and California. It's going to be right over the top of us by the time we go on in through the mid portion of next week. And you can see it's spinning doing the funky chicken right on top of us. Going to spend a few days with us and then slowly weaken and move off to the northeast by the time we go towards the end of next week. And another good thing here after that, it is not showing any kind of a huge ridge rebound as of right now. And we'll just kind of watch that extended forecast, but there's another trough there across the Gulf of Alaska. And yeah, it's that time of year where we start to watch for those ridges and those big heat events here. But yeah, the upper level low will definitely cool us down in the mid-range, the forecast here coming up.

[00:02:35]So, individual wavefi. I did want to mention this as we go on in through Memorial Day and then through Tuesday, you can see we do get a bump in some of that wave action. So, if you're going out to the coastline coming up Monday, Tuesday, you'll notice those waves increasing here and probably remain elevated on the day Tuesday and on into portions of Wednesday as well with that next storm system rolling in here. Now, if we take a look at 500 millibars, I always like to look at the upper levels of the atmosphere, just kind of look at the raw temperature data. So you can see that system move into Washington, Oregon. Then it gets cut off and it just kind of spins there right over California and Nevada. So this is going to bring some interesting weather. I mean there's going to be some pretty steep lapse rates and there's some interesting precipitation amounts coming for very normally dry state that is Nevada. This is also going to spread some thunderstorm potential back across portions of California here as well.

[00:03:24]More on that here in a moment. But yeah, you can see that cutoff fluid just really gets, you know, is really going to be sitting right over the top of the spinning and then slowly ejects off to the north and east by the end of next week. So let's see what the European has to say about that. Well, as we go through the day today, you can see some thunderstorm potential here across some of the higher terrains, especially the Sierra Nevada. We go on in through Monday, maybe a few showers popping off again. Then you can see the weak frontal system from the initial arrival of that next system into the Pacific Northwest.

[00:03:53]Then eventually that upper level low starts to drop down. It's bringing precipitation for some of Tuesday night.

[00:03:58]By the time we get towards Wednesday, I mean this thing is keeping things pretty chilly. Even some mountain snows here and some snow across some of the higher terrain in Nevada as well. Really suppressing temperatures on the day Wednesday. Probably some crazy thunderstorm activity here. Maybe some flooding locally there across portions of Nevada here as well. And again, the precipitation kind of continues on in through Thursday. here in Nevada getting a few rounds of some nice or you know precipitation on the cooler side of things here as well. So if you're off in the back country, you're definitely going to want to be paying attention to the system especially as we get on towards Wednesday and Thursday there and then Friday that system kind of starts to peel off to our north and east. Um I showed you that one. Let's take a look at the K index. This shows the instability in the atmosphere. So there's that upper level low. It's pivoting down Washington, Oregon. That cold air loss sets up right over California and you can see how we really destabilize here as we go through Wednesday and Thursday. So some crazy weather and we're going to really be paying attention to some of this in better detail as the high resolution models start to get in range of this next system. Now total precipitation in inches. I'll scroll through this quite quickly because this is going to be changing. But there is some decent amounts. I mean look at some of this here in Nevada getting up over an inch, inch and a half. Kind of a wide swath in Nevada getting some pretty good amounts.

[00:05:14]you know, Reno getting some rainfall out of this. Not so much once you get down towards Las Vegas. And you can kind of see the hit and miss nature. Maybe some showers coming for portions of California as well. But again, if there's any kind of change in this track that can start to include some other areas in some of the thunderstorm threat with this cold upper level low across the region. But right now, it's really targeting the Sierra Nevada and some of northeast California here and up towards the Cascade Range a bit here and much of the state of Nevada. Now, I probably won't show this too much anymore. In fact, let's go to the entire state. And and really, for all intents and purposes, we are pretty well melted out, but we might get a little bit of a bump with this upper level low. It'll bring a few inches to some of the higher terrain there. So, it'll bring a little bit of a coating of snowfall, but again, this is not going to get us back towards normal where we are supposed to be at this time of year. Anyway, now ensemble mean stuff. Let's go ahead and take a look through the mid-range, the forecast.

[00:06:06]Really good agreement with the models.

[00:06:08]That upper level low is coming. That's Wednesday afternoon. I'm showing you right here. And as there's Thursday afternoon, you see there wasn't much motion to that as it slowly weakens and then eventually moves off to the east.

[00:06:19]And then there's some additional troughing across the Gulf of Alaskan out over the Pacific. Ridge rebuilds temporarily, but that's no major heat dome. It doesn't look like right now.

[00:06:28]Still some troughing kind of showing up here as we go through the extended forecast. But again, we'll watch that as we get a bit closer and check that out as we go out towards the twoe period.

[00:06:36]Still some troughing kind of hanging around there as well. So total precipitation in inches on the ensemble mean again showing a pretty wet pattern coming up here for some of the Sierra Nevada, northeast California and portions of Nevada as well over the next 15 days. Looking at daily 2meter maximum temperature here. So uh I've got the entire southwest shown here at Death Valley probably up over 100 towards 105 today. You can see Southern California into the 70s and the great valley here.

[00:07:02]You got some 90s towards northern portion of the Sacramento Valley maybe towards 90 there for Bakersfield. we go through Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, you kind of see things cool down. I mean, look, some of the temperatures across portions of Nevada only getting up towards 50° here. The Sierra Nevada cools down. Still some 80s there for some of the Sacramento, Sanwaqin Valley.

[00:07:22]And then we bounce those temperatures back a little bit as we go towards next weekend. We'll we'll see how that's going to unfold though. And 2 m temperature anomaly. You can really see that upper level low kind of position itself into place here as we go through the mid portion of next week. And then that system moves out. What's going to happen after that? Who knows? It shows us this bouncing back a little bit, but more of a mixed bag as we go through the early portion of June. Now, next 10 days, again, you can see the precipitation anomaly yet again here, but not a strong signal elsewhere in California. So, like the Bay Area and Southern California, we're not expecting a lot of precipitation with this next system here, but we will be watching it just kind of make sure that's going to be the case. And, you know, we'll watch some of the high resolution models come in. We'll see if there's any chance of some showers, especially across the higher terrain of the coastal range, maybe down to the transverse peninsula range as well. Um, but yeah, I am on Facebook. I am on Patreon as well. Those links should be down below. You can share pictures with me here on Patreon also. And otherwise, hope you guys are having a good day. We'll break this all down again tomorrow. And I will catch you guys in the next