If your idea of a traditional Southern California Thanksgiving includes sunglasses and lime in your lager, this could be your year.

Following a chance of rain tonight and Friday morning, things will start to warm up over the weekend, with temperatures reaching the 80s in some areas on Sunday, forecasters say. The warmth could remain through the Thanksgiving holiday, with two long-range computer models spitting out “warm and dry conditions,” says National Weather Service meteorologist Todd Hall. The weather service predicts that L.A. temperatures could hover near 80 on the day before Thanksgiving.

UCLA climate scientist Daniel Swain seems to agree. “At the moment, the “'warm and dry ridging' still appears to be the more likely outcome (especially across SoCal), though that could change,” he writes on his California Weather Blog. Computer models “currently show a very warm and dry Thanksgiving across all of California next week.”

For tonight, the chance of rain will remain spotty, with the South Bay and the San Gabriel Valley possibly seeing showers and West Los Angeles and the San Fernando Valley possibly remaining dry, Hall of the NWS says. The potential showers will be pushed in by a typical Pacific cold front that is expected to produce decent rain in the Bay Area, forecasters say.

But that storm is expected to move through and open the door for a high-pressure system over the Southwest's Four Corners region that will keep Los Angeles relatively toasty through the holiday, Hall says. “We should see a fair amount of warming Saturday,” he says.

High temperatures in the L.A. Basin are expected to range from the mid to high 70s today to the low 70s Friday, to near 80 and possibly higher on Saturday and Sunday, Hall says. Lows will go from the mid-50s overnight to temps as low as the upper 40s for some areas, including valleys, Friday night, he said.

Offshore, Santa Ana winds could start to pick up over the weekend, forecasters said.

The outlook of a warm, dry Thanksgiving is preliminary, given that we're a week out and National Weather Service forecasts start to shut their windows at about seven days' distance. That said, the agreement of different computer models that SoCal could be sublime for the holiday lends some confidence to the prediction. And, Hall says, such Turkey Day weather “is not unusual.”

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