Wednesday, April 27, 2016

Slight Chance Of Sprinkles Tomorrow


Yesterday's dust persisted into the night, but skies are much cleaner this morning. The next in our series of moisture-starved short waves and fronts will be coming by tomorrow. The WRF forecasts from Atmo at 06 UTC last night forecast a bit different outcomes for tomorrow wrt the chance of sprinkles or showers. The GFS version is dry and keeps showers well to our north; however, the NAM version develops some light showers over parts of the metro area - graphic above shows the WRF-NAM forecast of precipitation through midnight tomorrow. Current NWS forecast for the airport grid point tomorrow is for a 20% chance of measurable precipitation, as well as possible thunderstorms.

The models agree that winds will kick up substantially tomorrow and below shows the WRF-NAM forecast of 10-m winds valid at 3:00 pm MST during the afternoon.



The 12 UTC MIMIC analysis (from CIMSS at University of Wisconsin) of PW illustrates our current situation. Very dry air continues to dominate to our southwest, while weak plumes of higher PW air make it to California but weaken as they move southward toward northern Baja. Very moist air remains far off, south of 20 degrees north. So question is whether a late spring system will be able to pull the more moist air our way. The dry and windy regime is, of course, very typical for this time of year.

Finally, yesterday was an active thunderstorm day, with almost 500 reports of severe events (below from SPC). The early morning MCS persisted and produced severe storms eastward to the Appalachians.


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