Winter?

Mike Crimmins' plot for rainfall (https://cales.arizona.edu/climate/misc/stations/index.html) this current water year (Oct.1st to today) above shows how severe our current drought period is.

Here at the house during the just ended meteorolgical winter of Dec, Jan, and Feb we had measurable rain on only 2 days (January 29th - 0.13" and February 14th - 0.02" - total rain 0.15"). The driest winter here was in 2005/06 when there was only 0.04" of rain. This was followed by 0.15 this year and last, and then by 0.31 during 1999/00.

March Comes In With Wind

Some dust blowing in over the Catalinas a few minutes ago at about 11:20 am MST.

A strong, 500 mb closed low is forecast by 12 UTC GFS to be moving across Arizona at 5:00 PM this afternoon (above).

The passage of this system has led to a Red Flag Warning for most of southern Arizona (above); as well as wind and blowing dust advisories at the airport (below).

Will post a winter summary tomorrow.