Very nice sunrise this morning (top) with light showers over the eastern Catalinas - couple of stations up there have had one to two tenths of an inch of rain this morning. Focus in this post will be on today - although, both the Atmo WRF runs and NAM indicate a substantial rainfall event by Wednesday evening - the WRF is more widespread in its forecast; whereas, the NAM focus is on the northern mountains of Arizona.------------------------------------------------------
For today, the Univ. of Arizona, Atmo. Dept. variant of the WRF (run at 06Z last night) continues to forecast an active afternoon for southeast Arizona (WRF radar reflectivity at 2 pm is shown in middle graphic). The model forecasts storms to occur in lower elevations, as well as the mountains. However, I suspect that the model did not properly forecast the warm advection that occurred overnight at and above 500 mb.
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This morning's sounding (bottom from SPC) shows that the atmosphere below 500 mb has continued to moisten and PW is approaching an inch and a half. Winds above 500 mb are Pacific westerlies, while winds below are southerly with a fetch from the subtropics. As the trough sharpens along the Pacific coast the next two days, the models forecast a strong northward intrusion of mT air. The trough in the westerlies is forecast to phase nicely with an inverted trough that is currently over the lower GoC.
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The morning sounding does indicate weak westerly steering flow today and CAPE is quite limited due to the very warm above 500 mb - sound familiar? So, we'll have to watch to see if the model predicted CAPE develops, or if it is diminished by the morning WRF runs with the new observational data.
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