Sunday, July 02, 2017

Moisture Increasing Across Southern Arizona


Moisture has been increasing northward up the GoC last couple of days - MIMIC total PW above is at 06:00 am MST this morning. Values of near to just over an inch have reached into southwestern Arizona. The northward movement early this morning was helped along by outflows from mountain storms in Mexico that reached into the central GoC region. 

The 12 UTC morning sounding plot for TWC (below) indicates PW near an inch, but with no CAPE yet present.




The forecast skewT above is from the 06 UTC run of the WRF-GFS at Atmo and is valid at 02:00 pm this afternoon. The sounding has about 500 J/kg CAPE for the surface boundary layer, which is fighting with an elevated residual layer above. Cloud base would be around 600 mb - note that BL moisture increases substantially this morning, with a forecast mixed layer moisture of 8 g/Kg (versus about 5 g/kg in the morning sounding. The higher moisture is forecast to come in from the GoC, i.e., from the west. The conditions today appear most favorable for storms on the mountains, with possible strong outflows.

The forecast of PW (below valid at midnight tonight) indicates outflow from storms in northern Sonora going into the northern GoC and kicking up the PW even more tomorrow - leading to a more active day in the model forecasts.



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