Monday, August 16, 2010

Very Chopped Up Setting This Morning




The cloud cover (below in previous post) and the chaotic TWC morning sounding (top image) indicate that things will be much more locally driven today. The highly modified sounding is quite moist, but its onion charcter makes subjective forecasting of what it might look like this evening almost impossible. The primary 500 mb vorticity max has passed off to our southwest (middle image is morning NAM analysis), but a contorted trough extends back across eastern Arizona and on to northeastern New Mexico. The NAM forecast for midnight at 500 mb (bottom) indicates main part of inverted trough continuing slowly westward south of San Diego, with the rest of trough weakening and shearing away to the northeast. The NAM forecasts activity today mostly in the higher elevations and in northern Mexico. Situation is further complicated by the weak, backdoor front that has pushed westward across New Mexico, and by the ongoing light area of precipitation along the Arizona/New Mexico border. Quite a mess this morning.
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I don't expect highly organized storms to repeat today, but wouldn't be surprised by localized storms with heavy rains. The exact timing and location of such storms to be driven by elevation, and amount of sunshine during the day - so, quite a different type of day today!


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