Friday, November 25, 2011

Easterly Winds Kick Up On Sunday Morning


This afternoon southeast Arizona is experiencing gusty, northwest winds (see 2pm MST surface plot above) behind the cold front that is now over in eastern New Mexico. High pressure over the Great Basin will build southeastward and push far south down the eastern coast of Mexico. This sets up an interesting situation with the western (back) part of the frontal zone associated with the cool high ending up out to the west in the lower Colorado River Basin (see NAM 850 mb 48 forecast for Sunday morning below). As this happens, the surface winds across Tucson area will become northeasterly to east-southeasterly and quite gusty Saturday night - this change will be somewhat similar to a backdoor frontal passage.


At 6 am MST on Sunday morning the Atmo WRF-NAM forecast (below) indicates strong east-northeast to east-southeast winds across the metro Tucson area of 20 to 30 mph. The WRF-NAM forecasts a low of 43F tonight for TUS but jumps that low to 54F during Saturday night. Quite a change.

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