Plaincast
What the forecast actually says — NWS Area Forecast Discussions, decoded into plain English.
Plaincast decodes the National Weather Service's Area Forecast Discussion — the real forecast, written 3 to 4 times a day by the meteorologist on shift — into plain English. The discussion is where a forecaster explains their reasoning: which models disagree, what they are watching, and how confident they are. Below is the current edition for San Diego, with its shorthand expanded. The full experience — an AI plain-English summary beside the annotated original — loads with JavaScript, and every one of the 68 forecast offices has its own edition.
Clearer skies with warmer weather will occur this weekend with locally gusty Santa Ana winds along the slopes of the northern coastal basin. Fair and benign weather will be expected through the middle of next week with temperatures near normal. A larger troughing pattern will develop by the end of next week, bringing cooler weather with uncertainty in timing and specific amounts of any precipitation.
FOR EXTREME SOUTHWESTERN CALIFORNIA INCLUDING ORANGE. SAN DIEGO. WESTERN RIVERSIDE AND SOUTHWESTERN SAN BERNARDINO COUNTIES.
The area of low pressure that has been giving us clouds and showers will begin to move out of the region, bringing clearer and drier weather today. Behind it, northerly flow aloft will allow for weaker Santa Ana winds to funnel through the mountains and valleys of San Bernardino and Riverside Counties this morning and afternoon. Most areas will be 5-10 degrees warmer than yesterday. These winds die off by Sunday, as a weak troughing pattern prevails over the region into the middle of next week. High temperatures creep up a bit more on Sunday with a better chance to see highs reach 80 degrees across the western valleys. Little day to day changes can be expected Sunday through about Wednesday with mostly clear skies and minimal changes in temperatures with highs within 5 degrees of average.
The weather across SoCal becomes more interesting for the latter half of next week as a troughing pattern develops over the West Coast. An area of low pressure is expected to develop around Wednesday across the Pacific Northwest. Models show larger scale troughing starting to develop over the West Coast by Thursday into next weekend, but to what magnitude and location is still yet to be determined. Confidence is starting to increase on seeing temperatures cool back to below average during this period. Ensemble model guidance begins to show increasing chances for precipitation around next Friday into the weekend. the blend-of-models forecast rain chances match with this general idea for the official forecast. Since we are one week out, timing and exact precipitation amounts are greatly uncertain. Please be prepared for more wet weather impacts, especially as you start to make those Halloween weekend plans.
This is the plain-text edition, decoded without AI so it loads anywhere. Read the whole San Diego discussion at /o/SGX/, see what changed since the last one, or open The National Desk for where the weather is today.
Data from the National Weather Service. Translated by Claude. About · For developers & agents · Subscribe: RSS feed for this office · Source on GitHub