Santa Ana winds and heat forecast for later this week Play

Rain is still in the forecast for Monday morning, but not a lot. It'll scoot out pretty quickly, and it'll be sunny by the afternoon. Heat will build Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday, and all the atmospheric ingredients appear to be in place and properly lined up for a pretty strong Santa Ana wind Friday morning.

A Santa Ana windstorm of at least moderate strength will occur Thursday night into Friday morning, says the National Weather Service. There will be a pressure gradient somewhere in the 5 to 7 millibar range. That means the air over the San Joaquin Valley will be as much as 7 millibars heavier in Bakersfield than over LAX, and that will push the air out across the Santa Monica Mountains.

Warm desert air squeezed through the canyons and out to sea gets heated in the compression process. That could cause winds of 55 miles an hour in the Malibu canyons and mountaintops Friday, with high temperatures on the beaches hitting 88 degrees.