Last night’s model runs continue to indicate a showery spell of no less than 10 days duration in the State of AZ. IPS Meteostar, a private weather provider, has repackaged the National Center for Environmental Prediction numerical model predictions here. No one cannot be excited by this prospect in view of our droughty August. What’s REALLY interesting, though likely in some error, is that a tropical storm moves up the Baja Coast , dies, but its remnant moves into AZ in 10 days (see model forecast below valid for September 14th). As a forecaster type of person, as well as a cloud-maven kind of person, this would be like Christmas in September to have something like this happen where maybe an inch or two of rain spreads over parts of the State. This is because we are supposed to be getting drier and drier as the summer rain season withers in September, and so this would be an anomaly. I’ve always liked weather anomalies, and this might be a real good one. However, as mentioned in prior writeups, these kinds of things come and go in the models, and so its best to think of it as like in a dream right now, but a pleasant one.
Some cloud shots below from yesterday. It was SO NICE to see that first little Cumulus cloud pop up over the Catalina Mountains in the early afternoon! While the depth of the Cumulonimbus clouds locally was limited by dry air and an inversion (temperature reversal aloft) and they could not produce strong rainshafts as a result, still in was nice to see ANYTHING dropping out of those clouds! Here we were lucky enough to register 0.o2 inches, enough to cut the dust some on our gravelly neighborhood roads.