Sunday, August 21, 2011

Another Day Of Isolated Storms

Yesterday was the second day in a row (after the very big rain day last Thursday) with very limited storm activity. There were some isolated mountain storms yesterday, but the afternoon skies were mostly filled with orphan anvils. Two ALERT stations in the Catalinas measured rain and that was it. The WRF-GFS early run from Atmo did quite well - bringing in drier air from the west and forecasting limited mountain convection.


Nocturnal convection in the Borderlands and eastern Sonora has left the skies filled with debgris cloud this morning (see 1315z visible image above). There may be an MCV spinning over Sonra (edited 10 am loop indicates no such MCV present); will have to wait for he sun to get higher to tell for certain.


The TUS sounding has a bit more moisture than the 1.2" of PW it had yesterday afternoon. However, ignore the optimist SPC CAPE, since it appears that the afternoon BL will have only a sliver of CAPE. Thus, with limited CPE and morning clouds, expect a third, mostly down day at lower elevations.


The early run of the WRF-GFS from Atmo (accumulated rainfall forecast through midnight tonight shown above) keeps activity in Mexico and along the Borderlands to the south. So, this afternoon we will probably have a lot of anvil cloud zipping up from the south (see upper-level winds in TUS sounding), but not much hope for rain. (Edited - 10 am look at 1200 UTC Atmo WRF runs shows even less convection forecast by new runs.)

No comments:

Post a Comment