North Winds For The Weekend. The Morning Briefing 5-15-26

Added: 2026-05-17

[00:00:02]Good morning everybody. Mark Fein here in the home weather office. It is Friday morning. It's now the 15th day of May, 2026 and this is the morning briefing.

[00:00:10]Yep, we're about halfway through this month and so far it's been a pretty good month. We've had some rain, some cooler weather, and some warmer weather. Over the next week, we're going to see some breezy weather, certainly over the weekend, some windy weather. And uh but we're also going to see temperatures not too bad yet for this time of year. Let me show you the way it looks outside the home weather office this morning. We have blue sky here and actually blue sky throughout much of Northern California this morning and not much in the way of a breeze, but it is the breeze that is going to be the main highlight, if you will, as we go through the weekend. uh looking ahead to uh yeah gusty winds especially on Sunday. So let's show you the satellite this morning.

[00:00:56]Mainly clear skies throughout the the state. Little bit of marine layer uh pushed into here towards Santa Cruz and down toward Monterey and into the Selenus Valley. Uh but up and down the central valley we have clear skies. The foothills and Sierra all perfectly clear and will stay that way throughout the day. See if I can move this without it getting too jumpy on me. Ah, here we go.

[00:01:19]All right. So, here in the north, the northwest, we do have this system going by. This is going to go by to the east.

[00:01:27]So, it's going to take a track kind of like this. And as it does so, we will get these north winds. Let me show you that here with the big picture, the 500 millibar chart. So, here's that system and it pushes the high out and then as it drops to our east right here like this, a low over Salt Lake and then this north flow. And this is this is Sunday night. And but as this makes its transit, we'll start to see gusty winds a little bit Saturday uh focused really on Sunday and then tapering somewhat Monday. But it isn't until the low is farther away that we're able to start to see the winds completely go away as we get into uh Tuesday and beyond. Since I'm here, let's keep looking at this.

[00:02:15]This is a warm pattern here, but nothing too hot. This is the end of next week.

[00:02:20]And then this would be the beginning of Memorial Day weekend.

[00:02:25]And uh this is Sunday of Memorial Day weekend. And then here's Monday.

[00:02:31]Another cool trough comes our way. Um, we'll just have to monitor what we may be seeing for Memorial Day weekend, but just kind of keep in mind uh that we may continue to see a little bit of unsettled weather, but again, that's way down the road. Let's take a look at the wind. And just like yesterday, I'll show you the two different models here in the close-up view, and then we'll widen the view.

[00:02:56]Uh, this is today on the HR.

[00:03:00]Not much wind until we start to get into this evening and then then we'll start to see some wind and again I wish there were wind barbs on this but these winds will be from the north and then this is Saturday. So and these are wind gusts. These are not sustained winds. These are wind gusts. Uh so these are winds that are gusting 35 maybe 40.

[00:03:23]That means sustained winds are around 20 25 something like that. But also note where this is. This is up and down the central part of the valley. And you'll notice the line in the foothills.

[00:03:35]There is nothing in the way of of wind.

[00:03:38]At least not wind gusts. I can put say that it'll be breezy. Actually, let me uh while I've got this frame up, let me go over to uh this one. Wind. Okay. So, this this is the this is the uh sustained wind. So, as you can see, as I scroll over this, it says 18 to 20 knots. All right, let's take a look at the wind in the foothills. So, in the foothills, yeah, there's a breeze, uh, but it's it's not as strong as what we're seeing down in the valley. So, I don't want to um, you know, say there's going to be not going to be any wind in the foothills. And then this is what time frame we up to now? This is Saturday afternoon.

[00:04:22]Then it does start to turn a little bit breezier in the foothills, but the farther east you go, the less wind there will be until you get to the east side of the Sierra. Strongest winds, you know, think about I5 and slightly to the west or maybe Highway 99 into the west.

[00:04:36]And it's and here we have the wind barb.

[00:04:38]So it's the wind out of the north. But once you get let's say east of Auburn, there's much much less wind. U and same thing from Plasterville to the east. But from let's say Folsam to the west and Roseville to the west and especially around Woodland and Davis it'll be quite windy. Uh that's Saturday afternoon.

[00:04:59]The wind diminishes a little bit in the evening and then this model will get into Sunday morning when we're expecting some of the strongest winds. And these are sustained winds that are uh 25. And then I'll go back to the wind gusts.

[00:05:16]And yeah, so here we could have easily gusts over 40.

[00:05:22]Um, so if you know, um, a weather headline for that comes out of Northern California may highlight the north winds. I mean, that's probably what my headline is going to be for today. Uh, that's the other thing. I don't make up the headline until I I finish talking.

[00:05:38]Usually, I do this and, you know, talk for 10 or 15 minutes. They go, "Oh, yeah. What's my headline for today?

[00:05:44]Anyway, um so if the headline is wind, certainly as you can see from this one frame that not everybody is going to see a windy weekend and and especially talking to those of you on the west slope. All right, so the the new model, the RRFS going through today, this is Saturday morning. looks very similar to the way the HR looked looked.

[00:06:14]And then um let's get into Sunday. See how strong this is on Sunday.

[00:06:19]This is Sunday morning right here.

[00:06:29]7 a.m.

[00:06:31]Winds gusting up over 40. Um yesterday it picked up a little spot here as well.

[00:06:36]Actually, it was down here yesterday morning's run of winds gusting over 50.

[00:06:42]Um, we'll have to see how that how the model handles that. Actually, you know, it's it's unfair to do the sidebyside comparison because the HR doesn't go out to this time frame just yet. Um, so we'll have to see. As I said, the RRFS is uh the new model and this is the one that's going to be replacing the NAM or is replacing the NM later on this summer. So, to me, uh, I'm still using this kind of as an evaluation. I don't know if it how well it handles north wind events. It may be overdone. We'll see. And then the winds become a little bit more widespread as we head into Sunday afternoon. So, we start to see some of those gusty winds according to this model in the foothills as well. Let's see what it looks like here.

[00:07:30]Yeah. So, um, yeah, Sunday afternoon should start to get a little bit breezier as the overall synoptic pattern, um, increases. So, for the foothills, I would say that we're going to see, you know, not much wind Saturday. Sunday, probably not much wind in the morning, but by the afternoon, it'll turn breezy, but breezy in parts of the Foothills as opposed to the gusty winds that we'll see on the west side of the valley. All right, let's zoom out a little bit here.

[00:08:02]And come on.

[00:08:06]Come on. You can do it. Thank you. And we're going to go out to the GFS and we're going to look at preset.

[00:08:19]Okay. So, here's that system that goes by to the east.

[00:08:25]um some rain, snow into uh Utah. Look at this tight gradient here. Yeah, that would be gusty winds in in uh Nevada and then our pressure gradient here turns northeast. So that's how this is when the the west slope starts getting some of that breeze. The gradient decreases.

[00:08:48]Now let's go next week. light winds, some mountain showers here. That's next Thursday. And I'm I'm going to go through Memorial Day weekend to see if that system does anything for us.

[00:09:03]This is Sunday and then this is Monday.

[00:09:10]Um certainly chilly for those of you that go houseboating on um Shasta for Memorial Day weekend. It's going to be cool, but uh yeah, it's not unusual for Memorial Day weekend. And then this is way out into the land of hope and dreams. This is uh Tuesday the 26th, a passing weather system, but certainly cooler weather. I mean, look, there's the 540 thickness line. Um, so I would say that based not so much on what what I just showed you here, but this overall weather pattern that we're seeing, um, going down the road, uh, you know, things could change, especially toward the end of the month because that's still two weeks away. But in the next 10 days anyway, I don't see any hundreds. And that's kind of the the the the bar you look at now for, you know, when things really start to heat up. Uh we can certainly we're certainly in the range now of of seeing 100 degree days in the valley. Uh I don't see any of that. We may see a couple of days, you know, sneak up to 90, 92, something like that. But over the next few days, I think daytime highs will stay in the 80s and then perhaps even get cooler as we head into the weekend, especially Sunday, Monday with that the gusty wind.

[00:10:23]Um so yeah, temperatures not too bad.

[00:10:25]Gusty winds and dry for the next uh five to seven days. Um and uh yeah, so not too wet, not too hot. You know, typical spring weather, but it is that wind that is going to be quite annoying. Um and uh the weather service put up a fire weather watch. They may turn that into a red flag warning. I didn't check this morning actually. They may have already done that or they may do that over the weekend. Either way, as we've been talking about, just this isn't a good weekend to be mowing any uh dried grasses u because any sort of fire that starts can spread pretty quickly.

[00:10:58]Although uh you know maybe not as quickly as it will a month from now, but still you know no reason messing with it when the winds are going to be gusty. Um so I think that's everything I've got for you this Friday morning.

[00:11:10]Make it a great day. Have a great weekend. I'll talk with you later.