Tuesday, January 24, 2012

Current System Produces Only A Bit Of Weather


This morning has dawned mostly clear, but with low clouds still sitting on top of the Catalinas (above). The webcam up there indicates a dusting of snow at Summerhaven. The Pima County ALERT network indicates 6 stations had .04 to .12" during the night - plus a few stations probably had some snow that wasn't indicated by the ALERT gauges. So about 10% areal coverage for this "event" with precipitation occurring at high elevations, much as predicted by yesterday's WRF-GFS.


This morning's NAM analysis of the 500 mb data indicates that the vorticity maximum with the short wave actually got south of the border, as opposed to yesterday's forecast that it would be over Tucson at sunrise today. As Chuck Doswell commented yesterday, this short wave will head toward south Texas, where low-level, moist air from the Gulf of Mexico is flowing on-shore (see current surface plot below). So, possible January severe thunderstorms again, after the devastating tornadoes that hit in Mississippi and Alabama on Sunday and Monday. More on January tornadoes a bit later today.

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