Mulling Over Henriette

One good thing about Henriette so far is that it is triggering rains on the very edge of its influence. It’s raining right now SW of Tucson, and south of Willcox as a result of Henriette, yet the storm is still quite a distance away from Arizona.

The eye is now ashore in Sonora. The high pressure system over the Four Corners that I thought might help push the storm west crumpled like a house of cards in the face of the onslaught of the trough now pushing through the northern Rockies. None of the computer models show the slightest hesitation in blowing the storm over the Sierra Madre, into Chihuahua and NM. Yet, on most days, there are southerly winds along the west flank of the mountains that would tend to guide the storm into AZ.

Today is not most days, however. The Sierra Madre may seem like a sidewalk curb to the storm, and the storm is an 800-lb gorilla that may not care a whit about the fair and gentle breezes of Mexico. But if rains can be triggered despite the storm’s distance, that may help. And those low-lying winds might help too.