Monday, August 25, 2014

Moisture Increases Across Southern Arizona


Only time for a very quick look this morning as I have appointments on the east side in just a bit.

Thunderstorms to the south and east of Cochise County pushed outflows across southeast Arizona last night. Low-level moisture across southern portions of the state has increased, and PW is around an inch and a half this morning, with very high dewpoints noted out in the lower Colorado River Basin. Lighting CG flash plot above is for 24-hours ending at 1 am this morning. Blended PW analysis from CIRA (below) is for 6 am MST this morning. The moisture surge associated with Marie has made it into southwest Arizona.



The morning sounding data from TWC are shown above on the skewT from SPC. The sounding is very unstable due to both the increased low-level moisture and cooling above 500 mb. Winds below 400 mb are very light from the south. Upper-level winds will push storm anvils off to the east. The sounding indicates that heavy rains are a threat today, as well as strong, moist downburst winds. So very substantial changes have taken place since yesterday.

The early WRF forecasts from Atmo had heavy storms by sunrise over eastern Pima County and thus were jumping the gun on today's storms, but both versions indicated very heavy storms today. 

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