Wednesday, August 5, 2020

0200305

Previous Forecast
What can I say? 

Good forecasts by the WRFNAM and RR.  The WRFGFS had a little too much activity in southeastern Arizona.

Discussion
Westerly winds have returned at nearly all levels over Arizona as the monsoon high has moved into southern NM.
GPSIPW plots indicate a general decrease in moisture.  No CAPE=no storms.

Initializations
An area of clouds is over southeastern Arizona and into NM.  All initializations were able to initialize the clouds fairly well.  All had only minor PW errors, except the NAM, of course.  It was too wet in Sonora, western Arizona, and into CA, but I've seen worse.

Day 1
There is just enough 850mb moisture for a few storms to develop over the higher terrain as dewpoint temperatures are around 8-10C in southern Arizona.

The storms that manage to form will be weak as CAPE is minimal.
The 6Z WRFGFS has the most activity.  All other runs have less, but I had to show something other than a blank plot!

"If you can't say something nice, don't say nothin' at all."

Day 2
So the reader might be wondering why I even bothered with a discussion today.  Well, there is always tomorrow!  Before I even start, I want to say that Day 2 forecast accuracy has been poor recently with forecasts yoyoing back and forth between nothing and active.  This is the case for tomorrow as the earlier runs had very little activity, but the 6 and12Z runs have quite a bit.  12Z runs move a considerable amount of moisture and CAPE into far southern Arizona during the morning hours.


One reason to be optimistic about tomorrow is that the nasty 700mb dry southwesterly flow isn't present over southeastern Arizona as the flow becomes more southerly there.

This all results in scattered storms from about Tucson and eastward.  

Another reason to be optimistic about storms is that there has been an excellent model consensus.  Below is the 6Z WRFGFS.
 

The 15Z WRFRR is very active and in Tucson.  I hope this gives you a reason to get up and out of bed tomorrow morning, except if you live in Phoenix. 


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