Rain likley in January

Mod rendering by IPS MeteoStar here.   Rain, mountain snows in AZ only 400 h,  plus or minus 100 h, away!  (I’m kidding some here.)

This is the first mod crunch I have seen in more than a week that had ANYTHING in the way of rain, even out to 15 days, in southern AZ.  While forecasts of precip here this far out are like water on a desert highway in summer, will bet overall pattern of cold in the Midwest and East will be changing into one of cold in the West, beginning in the Pac NW a few days into January.

Valid January 9th, at 5 PM AST. Green areas are where mod thinks its rained/snowed during the prior 12 h.
Valid January 9th, at 5 PM AST. Green areas are where mod thinks its rained/snowed during the prior 12 h.  Blue is extra heavy precip.  This from yesterday’s global data at 5 PM AST.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Why even bother mentioning this when its so far away in model terms?

Below, an arrow has been placed where a very cold upper trough will be starting to make its debut in the Pacific NW, and subsequently extrude southward along the West Coast and or Great Basin area, affecting Arizona by the 8th-10th.  Because its ONLY 216 h out, and the wiggly lines are fairly clustered in the central Pac to the western US, seems like this trough will surely be there in the Pac NW, at least to start out with.

Sure hope this works out for us.  Desert greening up nicely, but need more to keep up prospects of a great wildflower bloom later.

NOAA ensembles of spaghetti, valid on January 5th.
NOAA ensembles of spaghetti, valid on January 5th.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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.