February/Winter Summary And Look Ahead To Next Week

Brief Summary - February here at the house was VERY dry with cool to cold mornings and warm to hot afternoons. Rainfall was only 0.13 inches and that occurred during the early morning hours of the first. So, February was essentially a deep, dry canyon as the super El Nino continued missing-in-action here in the Southwest. The morning lows here went: 20 days colder than 40 F; 7 days at or below 32 F; 6 days at or below 28 F; and one day below 20 F, as per 19 F on the 3rd.

The winter (December through February) here produced 2.09 inches of rainfall, with freezing or colder temperatures on 44 days - contrast this with the airport banana-belt where there were only 14 mornings with 32 F or colder. John Glueck's climate summary of the airport data for both February and the winter is now available at the NWS web page - see

http://www.wrh.noaa.gov/twc/climate/monthly/feb16.php

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Hopefully, well see the weather over southeastern Arizona climb out of the current canyon of dryness during the second week in March. The global models have been forecasting a pattern transition for weeks now, but the change to wetter weather always stayed out past seven days. Now, however, the change, in the forecasts, is inching closer.

The operational version of the GFS forecasts from 00 UTC shown here are for total rainfall. The above forecast runs through 5:00 pm MST on Sunday, March 6th and continues the dry spell. However, during the next 48-hours the situation turns wet (below), with significant rains forecast for southeastern Arizona through 5:00 pm on March 8th.

The GEFS precipitation plumes (also from 00 UTC last evening - at the bottom) at least indicate hope for the long-promised change. Note that the usually dry operational member is actually the second wettest (blue trace) in this forecast cycle. Regardless, I'm certainly glad to be in a new month!