INLAND EMPIRE - (INT) - After a stormy, damp start to 2019, California’s highly changeable weather is turning toward the dry side.

"We're forecasting a ridge of high pressure to build over the West Coast that's shifting the storm track to the north and will prevent us from seeing any active weather as far as rainfall goes," says Roger Gass, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service. "It's looking like at least the next two weeks will be dry and there's no way of knowing what will happen after that."

Daniel Swain, a climate scientist at the University of California, Los Angeles, agrees the second half of January will be dry and writes in his Weather West blog, "There are currently indications this pattern could persist for 4 weeks or more."

Gass says three to four weeks without rain in the middle of winter isn't uncommon in California.

"It's part of the cycle," he says. Last season, the pattern developed several times throughout the season as high-pressure ridges hunkered along the West Coast.

In Riverside, only three January’s the past 10-years have had normal or above-average rainfall. Seven were below normal and in January 2009, only .03 was measured the entire month. January 2017 was the wettest with nearly 5-inches of rain.

By most long-range standards, January had been considered only one of the three rainiest months of the entire year alongside December and February.

Story Date: January 29, 2019