Hurricane Odile has proven to be difficult to forecast and illustrates that much progress remains possible for hurricane forecasting. Shown here are 4 forecasts from NHC of Odile's anticipated track. Top is from 8 am on September 10th; just above is from 8 am on September 11th; just below is from 5 am yesterday morning; and bottom is from 5 am this morning - Monday September 15th. Note that the first forecast was extremely close to the path Odile has followed so far. The next two forecasts shown were off to the left of the actual track by varying distances.
Unfortunately, the storm moved fairly rapidly once it started moving and made nearly a direct hit to Cabo San Lucas during the early morning hours today. The situation was apparently chaotic yesterday in Cabo, as flights were cancelled and tourists were stranded. We hope that the town weathered the storm as well as possible. This morning the storm is moving up Baja, and current NHC forecasts indicate it will slip east again, ending its life in the northern GoC. It's exact path will determine to a large degree how the week plays out in southeastern Arizona.
High values of PW continue to extend north to the lower Colorado River Basin (above is MIMIC analysis for 12 UTC from University of Wisconsin CMSS). With pressures lower near the weakening storm, highest PW values will tend to track with the storm, making the situation quite different than was the case with Norbert.
The exact details of how things will play out can not be forecast very accurately at this time. The day-to-day evolution of the thunderstorm activity across southeastern Arizona will modulate the next day's activity and etc. I have shown below the early WRF-NAM forecast of rainfall on the 5.4 km grid for the period ending at 11 pm MST on the 17th (Wednesday). Through that time, the heaviest rains have spread northward with Odile, but are still confined mostly to Mexico in the model forecast.
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