Dream maps in latest prog series; RAIN foretold for southern Arizona!

Every so often something stupefying comes up in the models, such as the extraordinary upper low predicted for over southern California on June 17th.   Well, that low disappeared on subsequent model runs, but as of the 06 Z (11 PM  AST) run from last night, its back!

But, in that run from yesterday, it wasn’t going to have any tropical air flowing over us; that air was going to end up over New Mexico and Texas.

Things have changed!  Now, no less than a hurricane remnant is foretold to scoot up the Mexican coast and be swept up by this low so that its remnants and all that moist air get into Arizona!  Check these two maps out from IPS Meteostar.  First, the surface weather map.  The hurricane remnant is shown just off the tip of Baja Cal (red arrow).

The green areas are those where the model thinks rain has fallen in the prior 12 h ending at the time of this forecast map, 11 PM AST on June 18th, ten days from now.  As you can see, the moist plume associated with the dying hurricane, and the entire tropical fetch around this low have been moved westward from the prior model runs and are shown to be entering SE California and Arizona.  Fantastic.

Next, is the forecast map that goes with the surface map, the one for the 500 millibar level, around 18,000 feet above sea level.  This level shows the steering of the moisture and that hurricane remnant, and that steering (red arrow)  is going to take hurricane remnant northward into the Colorado River Valley during the 24-48 h after this map.

Will this happen in 10-12 days?

Almost certainly not like this, but it COULD happen like this.  The model outputs have been fluctuating wildly from run to run.   But, the ensemble (spaghetti) plots are making the overall situation of a trough along the West Coast in the time frame of 10-12 days, “pretty solid.”  And having any trough there is a good thing when tropical storms are along the Mexican coast.  They could, along with a good moisture plume, be directed into Arizona.

Hoping there’s some model truth in this exciting display.

The End


 


By Art Rangno

Retiree from a group specializing in airborne measurements of clouds and aerosols at the University of Washington (Cloud and Aerosol Research Group). The projects in which I participated were in many countries; from the Arctic to Brazil, from the Marshall Islands to South Africa.