This morning conditions over most of Arizona remain very moist and the TWC morning sounding (Fig. 1 - link below) indicates a subtropical air mass with just over 50 mm of IPW. Although there is abundant CAPE, the winds aloft are light and variable through most of the troposphere. Thus, the situation is much like yesterday when there were many storms which remained mostly over higher elevations. The large subtropical anticyclone at 500 mb has three distinct sub-centers. The main one is over Arkansas with weaker centers in the west over southeastern Arizona and southwestern Wyoming (see Fig. 2).
The most interesting aspects of this morning's charts and the model forecasts relate to what will occur on Wednesday through Friday. There is a strong upper-tropospheric shear zone at 200 mb from somewhere near the southern end of the Gulf of California that extends east-northeast through the Mexican data void, and then across southeast Texas and southern Arkansas. The NAM initializes this feature a bit to the north and weaker than it appears to be. The NAM forecasts the west end of this feature to become a distinct upper-cyclone that moves westward across northern Mexico on Wednesday and Thursday. As this occurs, the 500 mb steering flow becomes east-northeast. The flow at 200 mb becomes more diffluent, initially from the east-northeast on Wednesday and then from the southeast on Thursday. Thus, a more favorable shear profile returns for propagating and organized storms.
It then appears that the remnants of TS/Hurricane Dolly (see Fig. 3) will affect southern Arizona on Friday and perhaps Saturday. Currently, the models and NHC forecast Dolly to follow a track similar to that of Claudette during the period July 8-17th in 2003. All-in-all it should be an interesting weather week.
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