Hurricane Paul has moved rapidly northward during the night and headed a bit to the east of the expected track. The hurricane is about to make landfall on the coast of southern Baja as a Cat.2 storm. The above visible satellite image is from 7:30 am MST this morning. Paul is expected to turn markedly to the west after 24 to 36 hours and dissipate within the mid-level closed low that has been nearly stationary west of Baja. The gradients in clouds and moisture remain very strong along the US/Mexico border. Dewpoints are in the middle 60s at the north end of the GoC, but only in the upper 40s at Yuma. The image below is a WRF-GFS forecast, on the 5.4 km grid domain, from the early run this morning. The forecast is of OLR (outgoing long-wave radiation) valid at noon tomorrow (the 17th of October). The forecast, if it verifies, indicates high-level clouds from Paul over about the southern half of Arizona tomorrow.
The same run of WRF-GFS forecast for 700 mb RH valid at midnight tomorrow night is shown above - indicating that higher RH values associated with Paul will just move into the Borderlands of southeastern Arizona. The forecast for total rainfall through midnight on Thursday night is shown below, with very large amounts forecast for Sinaloa and parts of Sonora and Baja. The model keeps the rainfall south of the border. So the large scale pattern is forecast to block the northern progression of Paul and keep the storm's rain out of Arizona. After the weekend, the 500 mb low that absorbs Paul may be kicked out of place and affect Arizona.
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