Thanks to Andres

Last evening there was a period of light rain here at the house, which was very refreshing with cool, moist air and a wonderful smell of rain. We actually had 0.02" in the gauge this morning. There are light showers and some thunderstorms around at sunrise and some sprinkles again here. During the last 24-hours only 5 ALERT stations measured 0.04" or slightly more precipitation.

Visible satellite image (above) for 5:30 am MST shows heavy cloud cover with some deeper convection embedded - as per concurrent radar image (below) which indicates a number of bands of showers and thunderstorms. Plot of CG flash density (second below - from WeatherGraphics with data from Vaisala) shows activity for the 6-hours ending at about 6:00 am. Considerably more thunderstorm activity since midnight than there was yesterday afternoon and evening.

The skew-T plot for this morning's 12 UTC upper-air sounding from TWC (above) shows an amazing PW (for early June) of 1.21 inches, as well as a sliver of CAPE. As per Mike Leuthold's discussion yesterday, the WRF model continues to shift the storm activity to the north and east as the day progresses today.

The MIMIC blended PW (below, from CIMSS at University of Wisconsin) for 06 UTC last night shows that our PW increase advected in from the remnants of Andres, coming from the southwest across Baja. An unusual situation, compared to the more frequent pushes up the GoC during the summer. The current forecast for Hurricane Blanca from NHC this morning (second below) continues to indicate that Blanca may move northward along the Baja spine this weekend. If this occurs, then a more typical push of low-level moisture is likely up the GoC. This is a really unusual start to June, with the El Nino perhaps playing a role in setting up this pattern.