A wet 2023 is exiting just as it arrived, with rain back in the forecast for the holiday weekend and beyond.

The National Weather Service predicted a storm front would move through San Luis Obispo County and the Central Coast in the early part of the weekend, dropping some light-to-moderate rain across the region.

Rainfall totals were expected to be between 0.5 to 1 inch, though north of Cambria was forecast to get upwards of 2 inches in that system, according to the Weather Service.

That was expected to dry up Saturday night, however, and into Sunday morning.

Don’t depend on your New Year’s Eve celebration being an entirely dry one, though.

The latest models call for about a 30% chance of rain on the Central Coast on Sunday afternoon — though that’s expected to be a light drizzle at most, dropping “no more than two-tenths of an inch,” according to the Weather Service.

San Luis Obispo specifically had about a 40% chance of rain Sunday night into Monday, according to the Weather Service models, while Paso Robles had a slimmer 30% chance.

Going into New Year’s Day, the Monday forecast “is still pretty iffy,” the Weather Service said, with about a 30% chance of rain across Southern California and the Central Coast.

In San Luis Obispo County, the likelihood of rain is even smaller Monday, with a 20% chance of rain along the coast and a 15-18% chance inland in San Luis Obispo and Paso Robles.

That should make for decent conditions for the annual Polar Bear Dip in Cayucos on New Year’s Day.

The unusually high waves and surf that hit the area this week will recede significantly starting Sunday, and return to more normal conditions just in time for thousands of people to make their annual start-of-the-year plunge into the ocean on Monday.

Meanwhile, temperatures are expected to stay roughly the same throughout the region through the holiday weekend, remaining a few degrees below normal at the high 50s to lower 60s, according to the Weather Service.

On Sunday, the high for San Luis Obispo is 63 degrees, while in inland Paso Robles areas, it could hit 57 degrees, and along the coast see 58 degrees. On Monday, the highs are 65 degrees, 59 degrees and 61 degrees, respectively.

Another storm system could hit the area sometime Wednesday or Thursday, but there is “good confidence, however, that this system will not produce that much rain,” the forecast read.