Best Of The Thanksgiving Holiday To All

Thanksgiving Day dawns with broken cirrus and scattered middle clouds here in Tucson area. - so day looks to be cloudy and mild. Low here this morning 40F, compared to yesterday's freezing temp of 30F (TUS had 48F this morning and 43F yesterday). The blended PW product is shown below for early this morning - the subtropical moisture intrusion is now present, but with the higher PW pointed off toward southwest New Mexico.There also appears to be a nose of values 15 to 25 mm up the GoC, and this may support some showers over much of southeastern Arizona late today and tonight. While the models were off a couple of days ago on exactly where the subtropical moisture plume would be centered, it is quite something that models started picking up the subtropical plume on the global forecasts 6 to 7 days out.

The morning NAM forecasts the 500 mb (below) trough to come across Arizona, as an open wave, during the night. The next weather system for the Southwest (except for a windy, front about mid-week) will apparently be out at 7 to 10 days, around the first weekend in December.

The current NAM forecast of total precipitation through noon tomorrow is above, while QPF from the early run of Atmo's WRF-GFS for the same period is below. The forecasts are basically similar, but the higher-resolution WRF indicates quite a precipitation event for the Chiricahuas, and also a decent event over and north of the Catalinas. So it appears to be a close but no cigar event for Tucson metro. However, there are very strong southerly winds at and below 700 mb ahead of the Pacific trough, so some continued monitoring of the situation would be prudent.