More Rain, Winds Expected This Week : Weather: Rapidly changing patterns will continue, with scattered showers on Thursday and Friday giving way to gusty Santa Ana conditions, forecasters say.

As the fierce winds that had whipped across Orange County subsided Monday, meteorologists predicted some rain this week along with more but weaker Santa Ana winds.

“We’re not out of Santa Anas yet,” said Curtis Brack, a meteorologist with WeatherData Inc., which provides forecast information for The Times.

The county also could see scattered showers on Thursday and Friday, continuing the rapidly changing weather pattern in the area for the past few weeks.

Santa Ana winds during the last week of October helped stoke fierce firestorms over thousands of acres in the Southland. Then rain turned charred hillsides into treacherous mudslides that damaged homes.

On Sunday, Santa Ana winds kicked up yet again, lifting ash and soot from the recent wildfires into dark swirling clouds, prompting some Laguna Beach residents to mistake it for smoke from new fires.

This week’s weather pattern will be created by a low-pressure system moving slowly down the coast, bringing the chance of rain on Thursday, Brack said. He said skies should clear again on Friday, with more gusty Santa Ana winds possible by the weekend.

Brack said the winds were generated by a cold, upper-level storm system that swept south along the eastern slope of the Sierras, bypassing the Los Angeles Basin and much of coastal Southern California.

Snow on Monday dusted the peaks of the San Gabriel and San Bernardino Mountains and the Cleveland National Forest and brief but heavy thundershowers were reported in the foothills of eastern San Diego County.

Today’s high temperatures are expected to be in the mid- to upper 70s, with lows in the 40s, Brack said.