Not Paying Attention

, capturing the pronounced shift to hostile westerly winds above 700 mb.

Walk this am was definitely toasty and muggy - quite a change! Should have been paying more attention yesterday. At 6:30 am MST it was 82 here at house and when I checked, dewpoints were in the 60s F from Tucson to Puerto Penasco to Yuma. The TWC 12 UTC skew-T plot above shows that moisture increased (during past 24-hours), reaching an inch this morning. Southerly winds below 700 mb have produced the increase in low-level moisture.

The MIMIC TPW below is valid at 5:00 am this morning captures the increase up the GoC. The 06 UTC WRF forecasts for 12 UTC (both the NAM and GFS versions) were considerably too dry below 700 mb - by about 6 to 7 mm. The rest of soundings forecast were accurate

The 1330 UTC visible image (above) indicates some cloudiness over the Mexican mountains, while the 12-hour plot of CG flashes below (ending at 06 UTC, from Atmo and Vaisala) indicates all thunderstorm activity was far removed from our Borderlands - so convective outflows not at play in our moisture increase.

Forecast question for today is whether or not there will be some high-level buildups over the Sky Islands this afternoon. Series of web cam views of Catalinas for past week (bottom three images) have not seen a cloud of any type since last Sunday! But the haze due to the moisture increase is clear this morning.