While it was cool and pleasant at sunrise yesterday (not so, in the afternoon when it reached 107 F), today was markedly different with humidity up substantially and temperatures about 10 F warmer. The time-series of GPS PW for past three days (above from ERSL) shows our brief dry-out yesterday, with PW rebounding late in day and during night - current values at TWC are right around 1.40 inches. I went out a couple of times before sunrise to look for Perseid meteors but was foiled by cloudiness.
The 500 mb anticyclone is very strong (central heights around 5980 m) this morning and is centered somewhere over northwestern New Mexico. The anticyclone will shift westward the next couple of days toward the lower Colorado River Basin; so the heat will continue.
The TWC sounding this morning is interesting - above is my modified version that started with the NCAR RAL sounding plot for 12 UTC. I've modified for afternoon conditions, keeping PW about the same through the day. Afternoon cloud bases will be around 600 mb, or a bit higher, and there is a sliver of CAPE for lower elevations (red shading). Main issue for the day concerns the strong inversion above 500 mb that limits the CAPE - will the inversion strengthen or weaken during the afternoon? The sounding is favorable for downbursts, especially if mountain showers/storms move off over lower, downwind elevations.
The 06 UTC runs of the WRF model at Atmo keep most thunderstorms and rainfall off to southwest and west again this afternoon. The wetter of the two is the GFS version, whose forecast for rainfall through midnight is shown below.
Finally, the NHC outlook this morning (at bottom) indicates a high likelihood of the development of a new tropical disturbance during the next several days. If this system develops to tropical storm strength it will be named Ignacio.
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