Discussion of 13 July 2010

Yesterday – very suppressed locally and worst start to storm season here at house in 12 years – as per previous post. Douglas was the only regular reporting station with rain yesterday – thunder, gust to 47 mph, and 0.07”. There was a nice MCS last evening right along the border (see image) and this threw anvil north across Tucson area right at dark. The RAWS stations in the far southeast had storms and rain, with Rucker, in Chiricahua National Monument reporting 0.73”. Sasabe, down southwest of Tucson, had a bit of light rain, as did 2 of the 93 ALERT stations.

Today and Beyond – precipitable water continues to slowly trend downward and all the southern Arizona GPS sites are now around 32 to 35 mm. The flow pattern in the entire troposphere is very weak and chopped up in all of the Southwest and most of northern Mexico. The middle and upper-level anticyclone appears to be essentially vertical over south-central New Mexico. Flow at 850 mb over southern Arizona is westerly, and the 700 mb anticyclone appears to be centered over the northern GoC. Not much that is very positive for storms locally on the charts this morning. The NAM forecast run this morning gradually strengthens the flow around the anticyclone and brings several 500 mb inverted troughs across the lower portion of the GoC. Thus, the model indicates an improving synoptic setting for storms as the week progresses. I do recall that last summer we seemed to have a very difficult time getting moisture, CAPE, inverted troughs, and steering flow all nicely setup at the same time – hope that the repeat of that scenario doesn’t last much longer this year.

Report From New Mexico – Mike Hardiman recounts events Sunday in the the El Paso area:

Home gauge picked up 2.50" - all from the evening storm. EPZ office about 3 mi to my NW picked up 3.01, about 0.20 of which fell in a midday thunderstorm. Other West El Paso sites picked up 1-1.50 inches. Central E.P. 0.80" ... Northeast E.P. 0.53" ... lesser amounts farther west as the deeper convection died out while heading east. Other 24hr totals (thru 12z) include 2.58" near Hatch/Rincon, NM, 0.75-1.50 over the Sacramento Mountains, 1.25-2.00" around Alamogordo, Around 0.50 inches in Las Cruces, 1-1.50 in parts of the Gila Region, and about 0.30-0.50 over the NM Bootheel. Post-analysis showed the MCV/TD#2 Remnants... an upper-tropospheric low of some sorts that moved from northern Baja into NM...and a northern stream shortwave trough moving across the Central Rockies all had some impacts on this event.