Very Warm Morning

The surface plot above shows the very warm temperatures near sunrise this morning (about 5:45 am). The easterly winds persisted overnight, keeping the low temperatures from dropping very much during the night. The low this morning (Thursday, Novemeber 4, 2010) here at the house was only 64F, or 16F warmer than yesterday's low). Late yesterday afternoon I took a look at the Atmo WRF-NAM forecast for low temperatures this morning, and compared the model forecast to the NWS grid-point forecast lows. The model forecast lows tended around 10F or so higher than were the NWS forecast lows - continuing the trend of last several days.
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Location-----WRF-----NWS Grid-----Observed

TUS ---------64F---------55F-----------69F
Nogales------60F--------49F------------61F
Douglas------49F--------42F------------50F
Sells----------67F--------56F------------54F

Other lows in the metro area: DM AFB 69F and Atmo 71F.
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So, the NWS grid forecasts tended to be too low, except at Sells, and the WRF-NAM point forecasts tended to be much closer to observations, except at Sells, where the model was much too warm. Yet another indication of how accurate the Atmo versions of the WRF model, tweaked for southern Arizona, are becoming with time and with Mike Leuthold's continuing adjustments.