Things shut down more quickly than I expected yesterday, with very little in the way of storms or rainfall - only some isolated mountain activity. The shortwave over Arizona (see water vapor image from 2200z yesterday afternoon at top) proved to be a more important player than I thought it would - particularly with its rapid advection of drier air into state. The time series of GPS PW (available on Atmo page) were frankly very depressing. Today, values are only in the low 30s mm, at best, at southeast Arizona, low-elevation stations. The middle, nearly current, visible image shows how suppressed the storm activity is today. However, the bottom image (GOES PW image at 1900z today) indicates that higher moisture values remain close to the border, so that there's some hope for a quick recovery. We're almost 2/3rds of the way through August, and there's not been much rain at low elevations this month (0.80" here at house, with more than half of that on a single day). So the last week and a half of month will be critical for determining the month's wet/dry character, just as the last three days of July were.
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