…so I wasn’t going to say anything, but last night’s model run based on the 5 PM LST global data went into a dry mode for AZ over the next two weeks, sucking up all that rain that was predicted in a run just SIX HOURS before the run last night (shown on the left), and all those runs before that one! Feeling like the model has punched me in the gut. It was like having your favorite’s team running back score the winning touchdown with a minute left on a 79-yard run, only to be called back due to a holding penalty. Or, in the World Series, the Cubs have just won the deciding game on a homerun in the ninth inning, but then it turns out that the batter hit out of turn and it was an out instead. Well, you get the idea.
Check the differences out 
between these two for the same time and day, Friday morning, January 20th from IPS Meteostar
. Its incredible. That juicy, wet stream from the subtropics into California (right image) is completely gone in a forecast made just 6 h later!
Unfortunately, the new run with nothing but an upper ridge along the West Coast, and a deep trough in the East, is a favorite mode of the Great Southwest Rain Repeller, La Nina. In spite of the WILD fluctuations in model outputs over the past few days, you would have to give this latest one from last night’s global data some credibility. Its as though the model just woke up after all those predicted rainy scenarios in AZ and said, “I can’t do this, its La Nina time!”
However, with all these fluctuations, rainy scenarios for AZ may still come back. Standing by, if a bit grumpily. Maybe there’ll be some Cirrus clouds today to ease the pain. Let’ look at a national satellite view from the bowl record-setting University of Washington Huskies’ weather department here: Yep, a little band of Cirrus approaching from southern Cal. Should be here in time for a nice sunset.
Don’t forget, too, those Cirrus clouds are usually the way the tops of winter storms appear, one with vast layers and produce hours of rain at a time, if you could slice off the topmost 1-2 km (about 1,000 to 2,000 yards, or about the same amount of yardage as given up by my former company’s (i.e., Washington’s) football team in the Alamo Bowl this December 30th).
Remembering that about Cirrus representing the tops of storms if we could only see them will help us get through today’s model disappointment I think.
