Short Update - Jul 26, 2014

I'll do a more in depth post this coming week.  But, I just to do this short post because of the outlook coming up.

As expected, it heated up this week with Dodge City finally reaching the century mark on both Friday and today (Saturday).  But, that's it for a while!  A change back to cooler (much like right after the 3i show) weather this coming week is forecast with chances for precipitation.


Looking at the Saturday afternoon satellite image I denoted two areas of interest.  One is the deep southerly fetch of copious tropical moisture moving out of Mexico and into the Rockies and then east into the central plains.  I discussed this a couple of posts ago as being the North American Monsoon.  The second area of interest is the "strong" jet stream coming out of Canada (denoted by blue) and this is what will bring the cool down this week (the associated front will be moving through Kansas Saturday night and Sunday.

But, the  image I wanted everyone to see is the copious amounts of moisture that is forecast for the southern part of Colorado and northern New Mexico.  This forecast is being generated by the Weather Prediction Center out of Washington DC (formally HPC) is shown below and that is the possible rainfall amounts from Saturday (today - July 26) through August 1st.  This is an average, meaning that some areas will get less while others could get a little more.  That amount of almost 9 inches in the southern parts of Colorado is a copious amount!  IF that verifies, there will not doubt be flooding problems.  While some of that will go down the Rio Grande in New Mexico, there will also be a lot of water going into the Arkansas drainage basin.  We'll see how that pans out but the pattern is certainly favorable for this type of event to unfold.  For me, as a Meteorologist, this is really exciting to see how this might pan out because the setup could actually result in flood warnings for the Arkansas River west of John Martin Reservoir and would not be the first time this year.  This will also continue to make a dent in the drought, even for the southern plains and which could also have a feedback mechanism for weather later this fall.

 

I hope to update this on Tuesday (maybe Wednesday as I have extensive Decision Support training this Monday-Tuesday).  Also, I'm gaining some confidence on the outlook for the Fall/Winter, at least for temperatures and I might touch on that in the next post.