Hurricane Marie And Moisture Return To Southwest

First a brief summary of yesterday - thunderstorms were much diminished across southern Arizona with lightning flashes confined essentially to Cochise County. Here in eastern Pima County there were isolated, low-top showers during the afternoon. Across the ALERT network 7 sites of 92 had very light rain amounts. Here at the house there were evening showers between 6 and 7 pm that produced 0.05". So, a nice surprise to get a last bit of rain from the departing weather system.

Marie is now officially classified as a hurricane by the NHC (see above), as is Karina again. The 1330 UTC IR satellite image this morning (below) shows the three storms. The spatial extent of Marie is impressively large.

This morning's NHC forecast for Marie is shown above. The NHC forecasts Marie to quickly intensify to a Category 4 hurricane. Lightning flashes on the plot below (CG flashes through 1330 UTC this morning) include some from storms at the outer, northern edge of Marie and also morning storms in the southern GoC.

The early WRF-NAM model forecasts from Atmo indicate that Marie's large circulation will push substantial moisture back into the Southwest, rather quickly. The forecast of PW above (on the 5.4 km grid, valid at 11 pm on Monday night the 25th) has pushed increased PW northward all the way to Lake Mead. Both versions of the WRF model bring thunderstorms back into eastern Pima County late tomorrow afternoon, with much increased activity across southeast Arizona on Monday. The forecast below is WRF-NAM on the 5.4 grid for total rainfall through 11 pm MST next Monday night. So, quite a quick turn-around from the down day of today, at least in the models' worlds.