Metastasizing Arizona Blandness

Kind of a schizophrenic forecast. The National Weather Service was right: there is a upper-level ridge moving in, and strengthening, which will tend to suppress weather. The forecasts a week from now show upper-level conditions which are amazingly bland, and thus not hospitable to storm development. In addition, the air may dry out to some extent. Right now, the satellite pictures show what looks like a hostile situation.

Nevertheless, the precipitation forecasts are surprisingly cheerful and plentiful. It's baffling. There is still more than enough humidity to generate storms, and so maybe the storms that do develop will be the small, orographic (mountain-forced) random kind of thunderstorms Arizona is known for. There is a strong dryline extending from Grand Junction, CO, to San Diego, CA, and so the storms that do develop best will likely be along that line, particularly in NW AZ: Kingman, Prescott, Flagstaff, the Kaibab Plateau.

There will be new moisture moving in later in the week: some from Mexico, and surprisingly, some wrapping around from the east, from NM and TX. The remnants of Tropical Storm Gert may be too small and too far away to cope effectively with the deteriorating upper-level situation in AZ, though. The southern cavalry may arrive late, and weak....

I'm not sure I believe any of this too much: metastasizing blandness is a rare and untrustworthy characteristic in the atmosphere. But we'll see what happens....