The day has dawned overcast and gray here in Tucson, as heavy middle and high cloudiness moves in from the Pacific. View above of Catalinas is from 7:40 am MST. The visible satellite image (below from 7:45 am) shows very widespread cloud cover over all of the Southwest.
The models are in somewhat reasonable agreement this morning, which is good since our southeast Arizona weather event unfolds tomorrow into Friday morning. The early cloudiness has come in with the leading shortwave, that is quite weak - the 500 mb chart above is the NAM analysis for 12 UTC this morning. The amplifying short wave that will bring our weather event is still off the west coast. It appears that this feature will be more progressive than the long-range ECMWF forecasts indicated but also deeper and further west than the long-range GFS forecasts indicated. So an event that evolves a bit differently than either model forecast, with no clear winner or loser.
The NAM and GFS are still somewhat different in the details of the weather over southeast Arizona. The NAM continues considerably drier than the GFS, and this was reflected in the 06 UTC WRF forecast runs at Atmo. The NAM version ends precipitation over eastern Pima County during the evening tomorrow, while the GFS version continues the event into mid-morning Friday. The WRF-GFS forecast of accumulated precipitation through 11:00 pm MST is shown below. All of southeast Arizona receives precipitation in the GFS variant, although the focus for heavier amounts is over in Cochise County and the mountains. Both versions of the model forecast rainfall at the airport of 0.30 inches.
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