Thursday, September 08, 2022

Waiting For Kay


Nice view looking toward the Rincons about 6:00 am MST this morning. 

It was very quiet across Arizona yesterday wrt thunderstorms and lightning flashes, as per plot of flashes below (from Atmo and Vaisala ending at 0103 am).



An IR view of Kay, which appears somewhat dis-organized, above at 1400 UTC. Note cloudiness to her north is already moving over southeast Arizona. The NHC morning forecast for Kay's track (below) remains similar to those of past several days.



The morning 500 mb analysis (above) shows strong winds on east side of Kay. The anticyclone has become very elongated, stretching from Iowa to Colorado, westward across northern California. The circulation center appears to be over southern Utah.


The morning sounding from TWC/TUS (above) appears to have just a sliver of CAPE when I forecast its evolution into this afternoon. The cloud cover will likely limit the depth of BL mixing today, and I expect - again - weaker winds this afternoon. My wind outlook yesterday did not pan out - airport measured gusts to 36 mph early yesterday afternoon.

A quick look at several WRF forecast runs from last night and this morning shows the model keeps precipitation mostly west to southwest of our area. This is in contrast to the GEFS plumes (not shown) and the NWS morning forecast (below) - both are indicating fairly high POPs for tomorrow. I tend to favor the WRF, since I think that the position of Kay will favor downslope low-level winds in our area tomorrow.

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