Filling up the portent jar…

With these model outputs1 for early October.  First, a tropical system barges into Arizona bringing copious rains:

Valid in 264 h, only 11 days from now!
Valid in only 10 days from now, sometime in October.  Forget any rain chances in the rest of September.  Temperature plummeting here now after hot night of foehn like wind from the north.

2015092500_WST_GFS_500_HGT_WINDS_252

The exact same map above with annotation.
The exact same map shown above with annotation for helpless little weather babies that can’t see what’s going on.

But its gets even BETTER!  In only two weeks, this tropical rampage:

A near hurricane strength tropical storm is about to smash into southern California bringing widespread rains to Cal and the whole SW, which once again, includes Arizony.
A near hurricane strength tropical storm is about to smash into
southern California/northern Baja bringing widespread rains to Cal and the whole SW, which once again, includes Arizony.  Wow, wouldn’t that be something!

2015092500_WST_GFS_500_HGT_WINDS_384

The End

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1These outputs, rendered by IPS MeteoStar, a great weather provider, are from the WRF-GFS model.  You can’t find a better model than the WRF-GFS, unless you can access the European one (ECMWF), thought to have better “skill scores”.

So, combined with the giant El Niño in progress, which will spin off stronger tropical storms than usual (definitely), and the results of trillions of calculations from our best model that shows a lot of rain headed this way in TWO episodes in 10-15 days.   The  chances of this actually happening are way over 10%!

Spaghetti actually has a “weakness” in the upper level pattern that will allow that first system to creep toward us; not so much support for Hurricane “Giganta” that comes toward SC, or system number two.

Will get back to you when the drops start falling…

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.

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