The seasonal transition to summer conditions is well underway, and there are quite a few interesting things to note this morning. The two visible images above are from 0000 UTC yesterday afternoon. Note that there was weak convection just south of the border near Cochise County. There was deeper, and more impressive, convection along the divide of the Sierra Madre Occidental in southern Sonora. However, the lower image shows that widespread deep convection and cloudiness remains primarily to the south over central Mexico - a long way away.
Above is a quick and dirty 500 mb analysis for 1200 UTC this morning. Shown are streamlines and 2 degree C isotherms, along with two weak trough lines. Currently, flow around the Southwest anticyclone is mostly off the Pacific - thus, very warm and dry. There are large areas already present at -4C and a bit warmer. This is bothersome, since last summer seems to have been one with unusually warm 500 mb temperatures persisting over the Southwest. Given the mediocre rainfall last summer, I certainly hope that we'll have cooler middle-levels return this summer. The forecasts are interesting and I'll discuss them in Part 2.
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