Barometric Pressure Forecast for Menlo Park, California
Barometric pressure forecast for Menlo Park, California — on the San Francisco Peninsula between the Santa Cruz Mountains and the southwestern edge of San Francisco Bay. See current barometric pressure and what it means for weather-sensitive people.
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Pressure and weather in Menlo Park
Menlo Park sits close to sea level on the bay plain, with the wooded ridge of the Santa Cruz Mountains a few miles to the west and the shallow southern arm of San Francisco Bay to the east. For most of the year its barometer is remarkably flat. From late spring through early autumn the Pacific high parks offshore, the marine layer pushes in through the Golden Gate and the San Bruno gap most evenings, and day-to-day pressure variation is smaller than in almost any other American metropolitan area. The interesting motion is compressed into the wet season. Between November and March, atmospheric rivers make landfall on the central California coast, long plumes of subtropical moisture steered in by strong Pacific lows, and each one takes the reading down ten to twenty hPa over a day before the cold front sweeps through and pressure climbs rapidly behind it. Three or four of these in a fortnight is a normal wet spell, and much of the region's annual rainfall arrives in a handful of such events. Autumn brings the mirror image: high pressure builds over the Great Basin, the gradient reverses, dry offshore winds spill down the coastal range, and the reading climbs to its yearly maximum during exactly the weeks that are worst for fire.
What this means for you
Nearly all of this location's pressure movement falls between November and March. If your symptoms cluster in winter here, the barometric pressure forecast ahead of an atmospheric river is the number to watch.